Leaving the Island

 

            --“You will come back!”

 

 

On the island, there are rituals.

 

Three times a day,

people crowd the jetty and prophesy.

Three times the receding decks reply,

“We will come back!”

 

Some will not come back.

 

A few even know this,

shunning the rail for a windy foredeck,

or a convivial table indoors.

 

The disappointed will not come back,

the distant sojourners,

the dying.

 

We chant to make the moment repeat.

But a moment will come that does not repeat,

that opens up like a gift-box

lined with earth or water,

inside which is

nothing--

not even a box-shaped space.

 

Today the earth comes back

to where we left last year.

A time will come

when even it will not come

back.

A time will come

when you will not come

back,

when I will not come

back.

 

Come back.

 

Come back,

remember, and so keep

coming back,

to when we first stood on the jetty and watched

those crowded rails vanishing

over an open sea.