Agios Dimitrios Loumbardiaris (Saint Dimitrios "of the cannon") is a small chapel dedicated to St. Dimtrios, on one of the small obscure hills to the west of the Acropolis. It’s a short walk from Plaka, the old historical neighborhood in Athens. My first visit to Athens was in 1987.
Tyche [tahy-kee] is the Greek goddess of fortune, daughter of Aphrodite and Zeus.
Agios Dimitrios
We met one morning
at a cafe in Plaka
Fortune’s mischief-making
had our coffees arrive at once
a ray of prismed sun
cutting across the narrow street
an excuse to nudge my wobbly table
a few precious inches towards hers.
She smiled
and I shivered as
the old stone walls released
the last of the night’s coolness
giving way to the rising urgency
of the Greek summer sun.
I was the timid visitor and
she Aphrodite’s daughter.
I followed her along
the broken footpath leading
through the brush of Nymph Hill
to her secret chapel
- Agios Dimitrios, she called it -
the heat settling on my lips
stinging my eyes
the dust of the ages
filling my nostrils with faint pine and cypress
smelling of millennia and of
my new friend Tyche.
We sat on chiseled rocks
at the front of the chapel
the city below obscured
by olive trees
scrappy thin weeds
and the midday tide of
midday haze.
We kissed as gods might
at the end of a day’s work
tired and languid
yet full of promise
my damp-dirty hands
soiling her loose shirt as
I licked rivulets of sweat
that formed like tears
running down
the taut curves of her brown skin
tasting of Aegean Sea-wine.
And then she was gone
leaving me to drown
or to live
- no matter to her -
she wandered into my life
for just this moment
leaving me to choose
to descend unbroken
onto the streets of Athens
or follow into the unexplored darkness
of her Agios Dimitrios.
August 15, 2018