Though names exist for love of God and man
There is no word to hold the flow of light
No metaphor that captures vibrant land
Or sings the wide-winged sun of isles in flight.

Old terms like Fatherland can never soar
The way a name for love of isles should fly
Without regard for borders, maps or shores
Like birds of passage roaming low and high.

The love for isles remains an unknown form
No alphabet, no syllables or sound
Beyond the sigh of wind, and all that's borne
On wing-shaped waves of air, sweet-island bound.

So when I close my eyes and dream of you
The place I see is sky, pure endless blue.  

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Margarita Engle is a botanist and the Cuban-American author of several novels, most recently The Poet-Slave (forthcoming from Henry Holt). Short works appear in such journals as Atlanta Review, California Quarterly, Caribbean Review, and Hawai'i Pacific Review. Awards include a Cintas Fellowship, a San Diego Book Award, and most recently, a 2005 Willow Review Poetry Award. Margarita lives in central California, where she enjoys hiking and helping her husband with his volunteer work for a wilderness search-and-rescue dog-training program.
 

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