Philip Pholeros Porter (formerly Philip Porter) is an Australian poet of Greek and Australian heritage. He is published in magazines, journals and anthologies in Australia, England, Ireland, New Zealand and the USA. He convenes the North Shore Poetry Project (NSPP), facilitating workshops, readings and Poetry Dinners. He has co-edited collected works of the NSPP; “A Patch of Sun” and “The Intimacy of Strangers.”
the waitress who fell from the sky
For Tom Dinan, my high school Ancient History teacher
Like Calypso, the lover of mortals
and weaver of dreams, she swishes into
the soul of her customers with her first look
up-selling them from
a scaggy Greek salad to calamari
with herbs, the most expensive wine and lavish
baklavades drizzled and dripped with local
honey, nuts and home
-made pastry. Then, leavened, just before baking,
with the touch of a virgin’s breast. All this under
a bracken shelter against the sun on string
-woven chairs of blue
watching whirls of Aegean mist coming and
going like an ancient chorus, swallowing
gods on leave from the tattered pages of my
high school history books.
First published in “A Patch of Sun”, eds Porter, Fischer, Kelen,
ASM Cerberus Press 2016
Hydra canto 1
Plastic cruisers jostled
by the slightest swell
vulnerable as their owners
to the smallest slight
They’re too tanned too fat
and far too thin
Like dancers without choreography
These tourist-ghosts wander
What to do next.
Hydra Canto XIII
Perfection- a Greek tragedy!
How tragic not to believe in human perfectibility!
And how tragic to believe in it! F. Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
this land is not perfect despite
It’s pedigree
Its failures murmur above
its seas
I hear them when the pines rustle
out of sync
the moon falls aimlessly into midnight
puddles
as I carelessly step back to the Port
from Kamini.
Poetry in this post: © Philip Pholeros Porter
Published with the permission of Philip Pholeros Porter