I am the Plover that comes
to stay but awhile, to feast
from these fields and fly
away fattened.
It is true. I cannot settle.
I must return again to the coast
where I was born, the rocky stretch
where my chicks hatched.
Some are blessed by birth
to live their lives in one lush valley,
learning every leaf and spring,
to belong to just one place.
But some are fated to wander
back and forth between two worlds
which creates its own connection.
100,000 years of fly lines bind
Earthʻs sun-bronzed belly
to its frost tipped head.
Wendi White hails from the Adirondack Mountains but now muses among the geckos and ginger scented ridges of Oʻahu. She earned her MFA from Old Dominion University’s Creative Writing program in Virginia, and recently, her poetry was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. When not at her writing desk, she builds marsh mounds for the endangered Hawaiian Moorhen.
Notes:
kōʻlea: (From the Hawaiian Dictionary) Pacific golden plover, a migratory bird which comes to Hawaiʻi about the end of August and leaves early in May for Siberia and Alaska. Figuratively—to repeat, boast; one who comes to Hawaiʻi and becomes prosperous and then leaves with his wealth, just as the plover arrives thin each year, fattens up, and leaves.
