It was called Big Island,
but was only a patch of woods
and marsh at the end of the bay.
Skiffs were sometimes seen
moving among the marsh grass.
People fished there in peace.
Why a spot becomes isolated in a town
or along the traffic of a road
is always a story.
Always a mystery that keeps to itself.
Dad knew the whole history of the place.
Why people went there and left.
It had the quality of a house
left to itself.
An abandoned place where the wind
blew through the door,
and no one shut it.
When my grandmother grew old
and wandered in her thoughts,
Dad thought, with his brother Si,
to build a little house there for her,
where she could tend a table,
and boil her coffee.
Keep house as it were
until there was nothing left
but shadows,
like the color of pewter,
soft, with twilight inside it.
Where there’s no place to go.
No idea to play with.
I go to Big Island,
where there is marsh grass,
and some protection by the City
now to keep it.
And I can put my arm around
Nan’s shoulders,
and look through the reeds, at the bay,
and say to myself and my grandmother,
this is a good place for pillows
and dreams,
and somehow
what the world is made of in ourselves.