The Islanders

Winters when we set our traps offshore, we saw an island further out than ours, miraged in midday haze, but lifting clear at dawn, or late flat light, in cliffs that might have been sheer ice. It seemed, then, so near, that each man, turning home with his slim catch, made promises beyond the limits of his gear and boat. But mornings we cast off to watch the memory blur as we attempted it, and set and hauled on ledges we could fetch and still come home. Summers, when we washed inshore again, not one of us would say the island's name, though none at anchor sloshed the gurry from his deck without one eye on that magnetic course the ospreys fished.

Winters then, we knew which way to steer beyond marked charts, and saw the island, as first islanders first saw it: who watched it blur at noon, yet harbored knowing it was real; and fished, like us, offshore, as if it were.

Robert Pack '51

From The Islanders by Philip Booth. Copyright 1959 by Philip Booth. By permission of The Viking Press, Inc., and the author.