In Mashomack, a poem

I want you to know that

all things are present

to those who know patience.

Among these tangled paths

all things have become clear.

Along their course,

I have felt the Earth

rise and fall beneath my tread,

tasted a wind that carried

salt and seed and snow,

made love to the air with

the dragonflies, finches and hawks.

I have witnessed a sharp sun in January,

and a sky obscured by clouding

just beyond the noon in July.

Shorelines, saplings and fawns.

Dust and mud and wildflowers.

I will retrace these paths

even when my legs betray me,

even when I become unsure.

For I have come to trust the birds

and the limbs of the trees,

and the grasses which lean over the path.

Even as the quiet nights are folding me

safely into my very deepest dreams,

I will know these ways and I will be

walking, ever walking.

When you come here,

look for me.

“In Mashomack” is from the collection, “A Shed for Wood,” published in Ireland by Salmon Poetry in 2014.

The author, Daniel Thomas Moran, former Poet Laureate of Suffolk County, and a former Island resident, lives now in New Hampshire.