Clear one island.
The surf brings you softly
to another. Stations
of cratered mountains, clouds
tightening around the necks
Of these green monstrosities.
This archipelago is a trail
of memory. On this old path
I find a new poem, a new
way of seeing myself.
These are strange pauses—
young tender islands.
Below, the sea is clear,
a sharply sloping plain.
The rippled surface like a sheet
of writing paper waiting
to be scratched in clean
white trails: the remnant
of lives written on its softness
Author’s Name: Kwame Dawes
