While the planet continues to shift, rearranging the northeast into some kind of Arctic replica, I took some time away, letting my muse wander among talking dolphins, small dragons and lazy hammocks under a hot, shiny sun. Had a cheeseburger in paradise, looked for Jimmy Buffet’s lost shaker of salt (thought it might be in the old Hemingway home, but no). And I pondered which island on the horizon might be the one that my mother purchased years ago.

Yes, my mother bought an island. She would, not often, but on occasion, do things like that. Buy a convertible when a station wagon would be more sensible. Write a letter to the Queen of England. Buy an island. Maybe to defy an orderly life, to make dreams real, to remind herself during times of inevitable routine that she was more than laundry folded and meals on the table; to remind her four children that our dreams were also valid.

We never saw the island. I’m honestly not sure she ever saw the island. The island that might one day be a family gathering place, or an artist retreat, or a healing place, or who knows what ~ a dream without limits. It could well be that the island was no more than a single palm tree on a lump of earth bulging from the Gulf of Mexico. Or it could have been a small but bona fide piece of paradise. It was sold, so we’ll never know ~ but the idea of it ~ the loveliness, the throw-caution-to-the-wind of it, the hopefulness and cheer of it, lives on in me.

………………

An Island Lost

Stars like freshly polished gems,
Close enough to touch –
A sprinkling of stardust
Soundlessly rests on giant palms
And sweeps across the sea,
A silent chime,
The whisper of a song
With familiar, forgotten words from
The language of dreams.

How far the distance between then and now?
A heartbeat? A century? All of time?

A story unfinished, a vision unseen
Green and blue on sandy shores
Ripe with adventures not taken.
A red sail, a setting sun,
Flowers in our hair.
An island lost awaits
A barefoot waltz,
Promising secret treasures.

But instead, a more reliable path.
Feet on solid ground. And yet ~

And yet,
A cactus grows in winter, and
Mysteries breathe in hickory trees
Where cardinals, red and fit,
Watch from lofty branches.
A poem from the future,
And guiding stars
like freshly polished gems,
Close enough to touch –

Stardust falls on me,
On you,
Then, and now,
There, and here
Inside this sky
Where dreams wander
And Prometheus plays
And Shakespeare sings
And Copernicus soars
And hands are held
And laughter swells
And love is forever
And ever.

~ P. Saxton

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