Islands

You drift fixed,

Tides grinding,

Taking some here,

Depositing some there.

Edges rise sharp

To glare at the ephemera of sea.

You anchor yourself

To stake a claim

At the ineffable.

Transported there, returning, passages

And harbors and bays and coves and open

Seas, the prow of self on bowsprit.

And you land, settled again, with one

Footfall to bridge the gap into something else

Just out of reach that you hold onto.

Why this? Perhaps because all who came before lived

On rocks adrift — Sao Miguel, Bermuda, Britain,

Out there amid the void, in currents.

And now you: Peaks, Barbados, Cape Ann, if you

Count the Annisquam, these rocks
From which you view the world

Each day, that piece of perspective

Firmly locked behind your eyes, within your heart,

Blood swirling currents and tug and pull of the limbic system,

Of what has come and where we will go.

Good things, good places, good thoughts endure.

We end up there, when the day comes to disembark.

Maybe that is it: Each of us on a single, self-same journey

That in the end returns to ourselves, with the swirling

Carrying on all about us, and we come to our resting place.

And in that pivot point of stillness: the question mark-shaped

Coast. The period at the end. That’s the idea,

The pursuit of the divine. That's what one wants to get near.

Rollicking waves one day followed by

The sharp tack of surety on others. 

It will take you there.

Pay your ticket. 

Keep your bearings. 

Do not drift.