Secrets of Noyes Island (JM)

 (Joseph MacRae, published in Writers At Play Presents: Our Legacy, edited by Daisy Barrett-Nash, Equal Arts, 2022. From July 4, 2021.)

Secrets of Noyes Island
(memories of Alaska, 1993)

It's one of many small islands scattered around 

Prince of Wales Island. 25 miles out of Craig, Alaska. 

A small fishing and logging village, Steamboat Bay, 

nestled here. Once a seasonal fish camp for the 

Haidas, an indigineous people. Then a salmon 

cannery was established, where I worked in its 

last year. Some of my fondest 

memories are here...

        Hiking to the top of Noyes Peak with co-workers, 

                         2300 feet up,

        Meditating on The Point,

        Seeing where wolves have slept,

        Having feet massaged in marble tidal pools, 

                     by tiny fish and crabs, 

        And communing with the ancestors 

                          in a Spirit Cave. 

It was my secret place, that cave. I could 

feel the spirit of the ancestors who first used it. When

sitting at the back of the cave looking out, there was a 

breathless feeling and one could hear a voice, Om-m-m, 

it was the voice of Earth Mother.

        OM-m-m-Mmm
    pulsating Heart Beat of
          Earth Mother.

It shared.
Earth Mother was allowing me to hear her Heart Beat.
The cave was like being in the womb of Earth Mother,
next to her heart.

Noyes Island shared with me
secrets that changed my

own heart. 

       OM-m-m-Mmm

       OM-m-m-Mmm

            can you 

          hear it too?

*From combined prompts: Freewrite about a favorite place: local expressions, ways you might describe the place to someone, things perhaps only you notice here, things the place brings out in you or allows you to do, things you have learned about the place. Weave into a poem in progress. Underline what stands out to you, lines that are striking, good sensory detail. Rewrite lines by devices such as: giving further or deeper sensory detail, incorporating metaphors/similes, using repetition of words or phrases. List questions/mysteries about the place, and in the poem answer them (without listing the questions themselves). From Daisy Barrett-Nash's Legacy Poetry, June 23 and June 30, 2021.