from The Island
Evening
An August evening,
Pale-blue and silver and the moon ahead,
And the canoe, if you should turn it westward,
Glazed to a lacquer red.
We had set up our house:
A fireplace of the island stone,
And a mat of moss,
A tent, and a balsam bed,
And a table made of a pine.
And through the twilight’s fading line
We paddled far down the bay
To look at the place so far away
Where the inns and the tourists belong,
The place we had left so hurriedly
When we heard the sound of a song.
Being established in magic,
Householders you might say,
It was safe enough to glance at the past
From our supernatural bay.
But then we went fishing instead!
And something reached out of the twilight,
Something so old and magnetic
Something so sure and prevailing
It seemed we might better obey —
For a song has a certain conviction
Heard at the end of the day.
~~
Katherine Hale (1878-1956)
from The Island, and other poems, 1934
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the European Union]
Michael Klajban, Secretary Island, British Columbia (detail), 2018.
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