Evacuation

By P.K. Harmon / Issue 11

The waves were too much
But still we stayed
The island was shrinking
But still we stayed
The horizon seemed to be vanishing

There was an evacuation planned
But none of us left
The children’s grandmother
Who had delivered them all
And the spirit of the grandfather
Still with only the one arm even
In the afterlife
Could not leave
So we stayed

We all stayed and sang the song
As taught to us by the children

Please listen for it now
So you will know who we were
When we can no longer
Tell you what it is we know.

P.K. HARMON is the author of What Island, winner of the Serving House First Book Prize in Poetry from Fairleigh-Dickinson University. Harmon lives in Mangilao, Guam, with his two children. Recent poems can be found in Gesture Literary Review, Fogged Clarity, and Southeast Review, and are forthcoming in The Colorado Review.