Kandylakia

Petros speeds away from Athena, east to the Aegean,
chortling a bazouki beat,
past olive, cypress, past confections 

in marbled cement, decorated by
tokens of human existence:
shirts pinned in positions of helplessness,
soggy towels, exiled plastic nothings.

Hand on handle in the back, I am
hanging on, filling up with west wind, my heart
rippling loose; I see Iris in the front
Germanically pondering the chances of death
as Petros sends horn-sounds around
the right side of a dwarf-Peugeot.

Roadside, a tiny church on a pedastal, a kandylakia, winks by.

I see inside for an instant.
Like the burning eyes of the young Greek priest
I saw once pulsing along Athinas Street,
from behind the small windows  red-lit, smoky saint-eyes
watch, remembering the world, 

and the long-ago accident that
hurtled someone through his miniature iconastasis,
that soul-sized door.

I am still too composite.
Rocking and singing past the red light and the eyes,
the sea-soil-olive air fills me still
like a lover's breath.