The Island

Since I'm Island-born home's as precise as if a mumbly old carpenter, shoulder-straps crossed wrong, laid it out, refigured to the last three-eighths of shingle. Nowhere that plowcut worms heal themselves in red loam; spruces squat, skirts in sand or the stones of a river rattle its dark tunnel under the elms, is there a spot not measured by hands; no direction I couldn't walk to the wave-lined edge of home. Quiet shores -- beaches that roar but walk two thousand paces and the sea becomes an odd shining glimpse among the jeweled zigzag low hills. Any wonder your eyelashes are wings to fly your look both in and out? In the coves of the land all things are discussed. In the ranged jaws of the Gulf, a red tongue. Indians say a musical God took up his brush and painted it, named it in His own language "The Island".