The Island at Dawn in Early June

The full moon has pulled the tide high

Through the marsh and into our yard,

While rain that fell for hours in the night

Filled the wetlands behind us.

We sit precariously

 In our stilted home

On the sandy boundary

Between the ocean and flooded forest,

Almost stranded

From the people places

We do not need to go to today anyway.

All is well right here on our hydrophilic island.

We are pleasantly isolated.

The rain filled our cisterns.

We have enough good water for many days to come

When we know the clouds will move on

And the summer sun will return.

Now the rain has ceased its pleasant hum

On our musical soundboard metal roof.

Clouds linger, allowing the gentle breeze

To slowly nudge them northeastward.

Their moist gray depths

Will not yet

Let the rising sun make shadows

Nor send electrons scurrying

Through our solar panels

That charge the batteries

To run our lights

 And our electronic gadgets

That keep us in touch

With the uncivil civilized world.

Squawking egrets glide down into the marsh,

Their feathers affirming pure white

Against the green and brown they disappear into.

Efficient hunters of worms and minnows,

They patrol with sharp eyes and quick beaks

The soft mud on the edges of salty tidal creeks

And graze for fiddler crabs through tall spartina grass,

While overhead a graceful ibis,

Soaring with long legs and neck outstretched,

Plays with gusts of warm southwest wind.

This place on our Earth,

This place of beauty and abundance,

This day of clouds and rising sun

And sea breeze and sandy ground,

The multifarious plants and animals

That I am an integral part of,

Reaffirms the ancient continuity

We call life and death;

A pattern of living and dying

That the offspring of evolution

Did not establish, but we carry it on,

And relish our time of consciousness.

This beauty before me whispers

That I too am part of the grand cycle,

And that I, like all living beings,

Will in time move on

And allow the atoms

I have selfishly hoarded

Through a lifetime

To become part of another.