Today, we are so gone
that damned near everything feels new
and isn’t that why we save to leave?
isn’t that the real tour: escaping?
Isla Isabela, in the Galápagos, is very far away.
When we awoke to spoiled oranges on the playa,
the shopkeepers danced, knowing
the hide-and-seek supply boat slingshotted back.
That’s very far away. A time capsule
with Darwin’s birds
sitting upon your knee,
and those tortoises
chewing desert cud in sea-sprayed bramble.
The prehistoric way marine iguanas
sashay like mini-dragons wearing grass skirts
makes you reach for binoculars, and anxiety meds.
Just know that very far away
means your coffee has no sugar
your bread has no butter
but your eyes eat plenty
of Ecuador’s children running
up and down the main drag; thin, tarp-home kids
who never see the mainland, only wealthy visitors
staying next door in the glowing lagoon hotel
that’s very far away.
Kimberly Sailor, Mount Horeb, WI, is a 2019 Hal Prize finalist in poetry, with poems also appearing in Sixfold and The Bookends Review. She is the author of the novel The Clarinet Whale. Sailor is the current editor-in-chief of the Recorded A Cappella Review Board, and holds a publicly elected seat on her local Board of Education.
Eunoia Review 