POEM CI

The island creature seems, I don't know why, a different kind of creature. Lighter, finer, more sensitive.

If she's a flower, roots don't hold her down; if she's a bird, her body leaves a hole in the wind; if she's a child, sometimes she plays with a petrel, sometimes a cloud.

The island creature floats forever on a sea that surrounds but cannot capture her. She goes to the sea, comes from the sea, and tiny seas are soothed in her breast, sleep in its warmth like doves.

The island's rivers are nimbler than others. The island's stones seem about to fly away...

She is all wind and clear water. A memory of salt, of lost horizons, pierces her with every wave, and the spray of shipwrecks clasps itself around her waist, makes the tips of her wings tremble.

The ancients called all that was not island Terra Firma, while the island is the least firm, the least earthy part of Earth.