Buying Supplies on the Island
by Donna J. Gelagotis Lee

En route to the village with shops
for food and supplies, I calculated

how much I would need to buy and how
much I would need to hide, such as extra

toilet tissue and bottled water, because
villagers didn’t drink bottled water

and toilet tissue lasted. And what I needed
was not needed at all not that long ago.

Now I’m buying tampons from America,
35mm film, and the Athens News.

In October, the ferry will curtail
half its trips to the island. The villagers

will rely on their own supplies: the sweets
they prepared in summer, the olives they’ll harvest

in fall, the wine they stored year-long.
The goat will give milk; and the chicken, eggs.

The news will become days old, and only those
with a TV will know what’s going on

in Athens and the rest of the world. The hoe
will rest in the field that’s been well

furrowed. The fishermen knows who will buy
his fish. What shall I take from this sea

of want? What shall I preserve?
Will I be supplied by my own sojourn?

~

Donna J. Gelagotis Lee is the author of two award-winning collections, Intersection on Neptune (The Poetry Press of Press Americana, 2019), winner of the Prize Americana for Poetry 2018, and On the Altar of Greece (Gival Press, 2006), winner of the Seventh Annual Gival Press Poetry Award. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals internationally, including The Bitter Oleander, The Cortland Review, Cimarron Review, The Massachusetts Review, and Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments. Her website is www.donnajgelagotislee.com.

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Artist Statement: For years, I would spend late summer to early fall on a Greek island. I would also occasionally visit at other times of the year. This poem points to the differences in the availability of supplies and how people of the village would sustain themselves, often relying on what the island could provide, such as abundant olives, pine nuts, chestnuts, eggplants, figs, oranges, lettuce, and much more. While tourists would buy items transported by ferry from the mainland, the people of the village tended to rely on what they had harvested or bought locally. Tourism may have provided the means to obtain modern conveniences, but whether these were necessities had more to do with what one was accustomed to rather than what one needed to live, as was evident in the ample nourishment from the island and the waters that surrounded it.

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Featured Image: Photo by Christos Andriopoulos, 2020.