I've been waiting for the right time to use this poem. -- For you, Douglas.
The Moment
by Margaret Atwood
The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,
is the same moment the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.
No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way around.
(I wonder if perhaps Laurance Rockefeller understood this when, in 1956, he gave his holdings there to the US National Parks Service to protect it from further development. More than half of St. John is Virgin Islands National Park.
Picture is one Doug, or Shelly, took on one of their trips to the islands.)
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