The View (A reaction to looking out at the Aegean Sea from the Temple of Poseidon at Sounion)

Homer couldn’t do it.

Byron couldn’t do it.

How can I expect to do it?

I won’t even try…

Sky more expansive…

Sea more beautiful…

Jagged terrain more stark.

Breathless, I stand and wait…

The view is the only thing I see,

And I want it to be the only thing I ever will.

I can stare for miles around me,

While the sea, sky, and the land itself stare back.

I want to know how, why, who;

But those questions lead beyond me,

Those same questions posed by those who built this place,

And founded civilization in these hills.

The view turns these questions back on me,

And I realize that I must appear

As wondrous and complex to the sea and sky and land

As they appear to me.

‘Round every bend there’s yet more

Questions, more of something I cannot put to words.

Who’s heart is so hard they cannot see it?

Who is so blind to not see God

In the complexity of this sky,

In the richness of the surface of the land,

In the roughness of the pounding surf?

But there I go, giving way to a desire to pen down

The sublime, the divine that you just have to see

For yourself.