For the love of God, we whose god is love
left our overbooked hotel in late August,

seeking peace & quiet on a beach
beside the narrow gulf between, yes, Greek

Samos & a Turkish National Park,
so close together traffic can be spied

moving along the island after dark
& terrorists can swim between their shores.

Because our stay in paradise was quickly
coming not true but to an end, I went

there to that place between two worlds with you—
not East or West, summer or fall, or now

or then, when I will leave you & our boy
alone, with no way back to such a spot.

Feeling as empty as if you could look
through me already, the underworld bubbling

up from below, I threw myself at once
upon the mercy of the blue slash green

Aegean, everlasting in the face
of all the turnover in gods it's seen.