Ex-Pat Potential

August 2016 Last minute trip

View of from catamaran

Panorama: Maho Bay St John

Platform Beach looking back into Magens Bay St Thomas

by W. S. Monk

*Inspired by Edna St. Vincent Millay's 'Renascence'

Below the ocean the fish swim free;

I often wish they’d share with me.

Up above, the birds take flight,

And with them so do my delights

                          ---

Take me please, to a place so sweet

That emptiness can’t swallow me

Can’t bring me in with stony claws, 

Can’t hold me tight with claims so tall

Can’t see the open mark upon my chest,

Where my soul has picked up and left

                             ---

So take me please, to some place so sweet

That not even words could reach, and touch me.

Where even cords can’t bind and hold me,

Where my loves wait to comfort and console me.

                              ---

The fish, they have offered to share with me,

Their ocean filled with peace and serenity.

The birds, they swoop low, 

Their feathers dipping in harmony.

Packages they carry, and on them a name.

I seek to read it and find it’s me!

                               ---

My dreams they carry in these things!

My happiness is wrapped in threes!

And each bird swoops low to deliver them to me!

                            ---

The birds grasp my collar and pull me,

Up into the sky, I go without a care.

The song of their working wings,

Such a pleasant one...

It works to lull me, to create in me

The freedom of the fishes in the sea,

The peace of the birds, their divinity

The affection of a mother to her cub,

The kindness of a silver dove.

                              ---

I have been taken to a place so sweet,

Where even emptiness can’t touch me.

And who do I have but to thank?