A Wreck of Paradise

It’s not under the water.
It still seems to float in it,
The usual bad ideas,

Head held just above the waves
Thanks to old, eroding stones.
View it through your memories,

An island, minuscule, rock
Speck you might expect closer
To some sort of mainland port,

Kind with a lighthouse on it,
But out here mostly swept bare
By wind and inundation

Whenever a storm blows through
As storms do regularly.
If you can manage to land,

You can’t step without tripping
On bits of the wreck itself,
Scattered around the basalt,

The outline still visible,
Less like a ship than a wall,
A low, broken garden wall,

And in the middle of it,
The island, the wreck, the same,
A peculiar, feral green

Adapted to conditions
Of winds and salty dousings
That would decimate most weeds.

Here Paradise ran aground
On the stern surprise of rocks,
But just because no one lives

In Paradise anymore,
Just because the garden’s wrecked
Descendants of lost cargo,

Doesn’t mean it’s disappeared
Completely. Seals like angels
Ring the wreck for protection,

Lolling and scratching their thoughts.
Not all underwater yet,
The usual bad ideas.