A SOUVENIR

On one of Mazzaro’s gritty beaches

a cable car below Taormina,

I found a piece of Etna’s lava

the size of a goujon, a sinker,

a bobbin, smoothed only a little

by modest Mediterranean tides;

fetching five euros in the tourist shops but

unseen by the landlords of expensive

loungers and umbrellas, by Russian tourists,

Thai masseuses, Indian peddlers. No doubt

geologists could date it exactly

but I prefer the inexactitudes

of possibilities. Perhaps it was spewed

when the city walls of Catania

diverted the flow into the harbour

or when the Carthaginians were thwarted

from capturing Syracuse, or when Aeneas,

in his wanderings, approached Sicily.

Dark grey pumice, heavy, pockmarked like

moon craters, still smelling distantly

of the sea, it rests on a mantelpiece

next to a bit of driftwood slight as balsam,

shaped like a small fish, found on Deganwy beach

by Afon Conwy – stolen goods, contraband,

freighted with histories.