Ronna Magy

Long View

Seated at the Athens café under grapevines
my eyes caress leaf covered walls.
Rough the cobblestones under our feet.
Memory reclaims dad’s story of
one pair of shoes one black suit
split between brothers Saturday nights.

How the waiter’s tray wobbles moussaka and bread.
Olive oil pressed between jagged leaves.
Rusty brass doors reflect father’s gray eyes.
Around waiter’s lips that familiar slow smile.

Now there is only time and the dust.
And I hear myself sigh looking through
wooden arches over tiled roofs.
Peering down a valley atop the old stones.

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Ronna Magy is a poet and memoirist with work forthcoming or previously published in Wild Crone Wisdom, Persimmon Tree, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Writers Resist, Artists and Climate Change, American Writers Review, Sinister Wisdom, and Nasty Women Poets. She holds degrees from UC Berkeley and the University of Michigan. Ronna recently coordinated a reading of lesbian poets over 60 for the OutWrite Festival. She’s a retired textbook writer and teacher of English as a Second Language.

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