Explanation

It will take a good fight to bring her back

and the chief there orders his men to call

her in with conch shells, even if it means love

or staying on the beach when the sand hardens.

There’s the chance she’ll float like Olofat

who spat blood and broke himself

into an archipelago. There’s the chance

she drank the sweet water in Tol

and poured her body out as a spring.

There’s the half-caste joke about the men

who left the lighthouse years ago.

No one can discuss sunsets or the fiberglass

of the boat or the story about her breasts

bloating later in the shape of an island,

into real rock. A bulletin goes out

and the boys climb trees for signals.

It could be days she stays huddled there,

and the oddsmakers on Saipan

place their faith in the fish she might spear.

Big deal some say, remember when the cliff

had imprints of hands, and the sliding streaks

of Sudal. There’s the chance she’s stuck

in a tunnel of coral or torn to tufts

and in that case the son could start killing

the pigs. She left the Mortlocks at night

and now the women cover the fences

with fronds and start with the baskets.

There’s the hope she’ll drift again as scraps

of land, as the upper half of a woman’s body,

the curve of sand in her neck.