by Emily A. Benton
With skin chalked by salt
tossed in a history’s making,
I tottered across the shore
collecting pumiced stones
and searched for fossils,
myna feather, and coins.
You do not have to imagine it—
your isle also red and sulfurous.
An archipelago apart, you slept,
the morning not yet morning in our bed.
Ships came and went,
but you did not hear them
lowing their slow apologies.
I’m sorry I was such a poet
about what has existed long before me.
I grew up wooded, landlocked,
wishing on pebbles skipped.
Your home found its breath
on a lava rock’s porous lips.
But O, how these whitewashed villas
embrace me like a reflection!
What a strange union we’ll make.
Emily A. Benton is an assistant poetry editor for storySouth.com and a graduate of the MFA Writing Program at UNC Greensboro. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in journals such as Hayden’s Ferry Review, Harpur Palate, Barn Owl Review, Yemassee, and Southern Poetry Review. Originally from Chattanooga, Tennessee, she moved to Pahoa, Hawai`i in 2012. She now lives and works in Honolulu.
Hawaii Pacific Review 