Page 38 - WTP Vol.X#1

31
susan Johnson
To Keep
To keep an island, you forage the island,
just as to keep sane you clear a path, an opening to the sea. You glean: beach peas, samphire
greens, gull eggs. Ancient rum. Whatever washes up. You pull it from the surf, through waves and against waves that
always pull back. That try to take you back, the you that has become part of the island. Most days you just try to keep
yourself. Keep house, keep track, keep
your sights in line. No one knows how to properly land on this cobbled coast. An island
never settled because offshore winds kept blowing boats away. Or astray. As if the island was content just being itself. As if any of
us are. You work hard to see movement, twitch of fern that could be fox sparrow. What you need to work on is seeing stillness.
On an island you live in two worlds at once. One wave, one particle. One familiar, one forever strange. Tiny fish hide in wrack,
tiny birds hide under rocks. You don’t hide. You search. Here’s a doll’s head wedged between ropes and traps, its eyes permanently
open. What did it see its years adrift? you wonder. Where is everyone? its cracked mouth asks. This is everyone, you say.
Susan Johnson received her MFA and PhD from UMass Amherst, where she teaches writing. Her poems have recently appeared
in Rhino, Into the Void, Trampoline, Steam Ticket, Front Range Review, and SLAB. She lives in South Hadley, MA.