I float in the Pacific by my sister Miriel
off a squinched Hawai'i: the Big Isle mere
yards wide, but a witch hat--volcanic shields
tipi-steep! And not quite our Hawai'ian Isles:
see that craggy northeast satellite? Between
lies a sheltered strait whose verdant shore
is home to a tribe adoring war, unsubduable still
by feathered would-be kings of the archipelago.
Unconquered thorn-isle, jab the empire's toe!
What year is it? Pre-Cook, I know--before
Hawaii's dialect has much diverged; Hawai'i
still "Havaiki", Molokai "Morotai", aloha "arofa".
A time-tourist teaches me the rebels' greeting.
Not "arofa"--saying "love" to strangers annoys
those feisty Satellite Island boys. She
sings me the northeast paddle-chant, too--
I love it, roar aloud, as we all canoe
south around red basaltic cliff-heads to
the royal heartland. Mock their dynasty!
Then Miriel and I sail past the rebel shore,
and west along this Hawai'i's chain, far
shorter than our world's: just three or four
islands and two wide atoll-eyes. Then open sea.
Oars, canoes dissolving too;
now we're swimming, nakedly
on our own in blue.
But this dollhouse Pacific is untrue;
you can see all the Rim (for this indigo
eye is Walden-flat: mere pond in a city park)
and only neck-deep! To scale, the sea'd
be full fathom five, with trenches deep and dark.
Too shallow small. Lagoon, a wading pool!
Hence harmless. So I thought.
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We stray into a current--several knots--
sweeping us south to a round low isle.
Uneasy, I think "What the hell's that, Fiji?"
A lone whale in lieu of our school of krill.
Not our world at all, at all. Polynesia gone!
Miriel and I let the torrent rush us on.
I kick the shallow floor, leap-splash!
Porpoise panorama. White seethe ahead.
A maelstrom off a sea-cave: Fiji's fanged
and hungry maw. The whole Pacific pool
here funnels under that island-dome.
A pumphouse filtering the sea? Unsure.
But as we near, I fear the belly of
the whirl--will it baleen us or devour?
The under-island pool that I surmise
may have no air at all! And could we fight
back out to light against relentless flow?
Alarmed, I start to wake. And so
I conjure a rope, to Miriel bind, devise a code
of tugs, and in the monster's mouth she goes.
Risky dangle. A torrent dragon-strong!
Who's tugging now--sister, pump?
Will I feel the sign to save her? So fierce!
What if Miriel drowns? Been 30 years
since I took CPR. Death sucks us from
this innocent turquoise pool.
How trusting, how naïve I was--
a current-floating fool.
I wake at moonlit 3 AM,
still sweating, fevered, ill.
Still drifting toward the maelstrom
whose gullet gulps us all.
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