Sicily, land of cannibal giants,
greedy and fat, they cracked
our masts with boulders and waded,
bulging knees like bulwarks,
foaming breakwater thighs,
as they picked my crew from the surf by their lapels
and gorged.
I awoke on the blinding sand alongside
the belly of a whale.
A polished mandible shined,
half-submerged, picked clean by tiny crustaceans,
like a comb of ivory spikes.
I fled into their country,
saw their farms: endless rye.
Forage for bovine behemoths
that the giants stuff for their sausages
when sailors aren’t in season.
The craft of those fields stunned me.
So carefully rotated, woven vineyards and bean poles,
clover meadows tufted with goldenrod, asters,
a log bower overrun by creepers that some
weary, dirt stained giant
Finds reprieve in after a morning of churned sod.
A distant crag gleamed white as bone.