Islands will take your best laid plans
and wreck them
with weather that cancels your flights, one by one,
leaving piles of gear camping in the corner,
next to your sons’ fishing poles bereft of Shuyak silvers,
Leaving you to your printed lists, checked and circled, your maps and
tidy rectangles of lasagna frozen in tinfoil portions
Who to believe? The Windy app with its wild magenta and mustard swirls?
Or the pilot who promises
he will pick you up, eventually
What if the coffee runs out?
You were going to build fires in a cabin woodstove,
eat chocolate and write about old trees
If only there wasn’t Monday and school days and the dog sitter
You call it all off and drive to an empty beach
that faces another island you’ll never visit, and being there
makes you think of paths you won’t choose. Or will.
Reminds you that islands will also take
our grief and rage and loneliness, all of it.
Take your pick
send your sorrows down a cold clear creek
fling them like wind through spruce
slip them into waves following waves until the weight fades
and pales like a storm rinsed sky
