BPR 53 | 2026
We’re standing waist-deep in gentle water,
talking in pairs. My son is telling me
about his friend who converted from Zen Buddhism
to Greek Orthodox. Our conversation
from there climbs to Mount Athos, then the convent
on the Samian mountaintop,
whose three remaining nuns (this was the Seventies)
went by the Old Calendar.
Their wine and honey and their hens and bees
come back to me. Again I see the sun-
dappled grape arbor, hot September noon,
the whitewashed stones of wall and well, the path
to the chapel where we lit a candle.
Then, not for the first time, I find myself
telling my son about the village landlord
from those same years, who when I asked him whether
his wife could read (why did I ask him that?)
answered “Does a door know how to read?”
Nearby in the mild water, I half hear
my husband telling our daughter-in-law (who, whether
she’s waist-deep in water or on dry land—
I recognize the attentive tilt of her head—
is a listener from heaven)
something about his former wife or maybe
his former life. What she is telling him
I can’t make out. But everything is former
until this moment as the sun dips low
and we troop back onto the beach,
digging our forty toes into the sand.