As Athens held me
high up above it’s ears
it showed me the world.

Eating honey and doughnuts
I planned my itinerary;
The morning Mediterranean sun
blanching my white, northern skin.

It was exhilerating
wandering the streets -
they were all graffiti and flowers -
swopping smiles with
strangers I already knew.

The derelictness,
the modernity, the anarchy, contained there
all distilled in me;
Until I was at once a teenager, a woman,
a stirred citizen of old.
Quite the humbled student, too.

But on taking a shortcut through the National Garden
I smelt Eucalyptus trees for the first time(!)
I’d found my Eden there.
And nothing I’d seen or heard
or tasted, until that moment,
could have stirred my heart into such an
immediate state of love.