Alone, I am island

I am an unpopulated island
in a teeming quicksilver sea.
I am a sturdy outcropping,
raw, rocky, ravaged
by two thousand years of volcanoes,
seismic shifts.
I am a testimony to the chaos
from which all life begins.

“We’ll smooth, says the ocean, it’s what we do—
soothe and smooth and
flatten your sharp edges, make nice
with all your singular points of upheaval.

Together we’ll make sand.
It will be soft between the toes
and the claws and the webs
of the two and four footed ones
that will someday want to walk your beaches.”

I am an island of resistance
in a placating sea. I will not crumble
under ocean’s incessant coax
towards making more of less,
or less of more.

I am an unpopulated island
in a sea of we-will-change-you.
I live, not to please or appease
a greening
groaning planet,

but to touch the very heavens
with my rocky peaks!
To push the clouds aside,
write my story, cursive
but not cursory,
in pointed stone
across the smooth blue sky.

–Melinda Coppola

Poet’s notes:  I am truly captivated by stories of people like Charles Baird, who lived for a year alone on an essentially unpopulated island off Alaska. I am introvert and dreamer enough to imagine a current of deep and wild joy that could fuel such an endeavor.