Sometimes in stillness beneath
Plumeria’s pink petals and dark green
leaves overlapping, under arched
patterns of tinted light,
nature’s stained-glass,
I feel the thrum of profusion.
Wind on leaf on bloom on fruit
and lizard dash on lava stone—
dizzied until I sense
the speed at which we spin.
1000 miles per hour on Earth’s axis,
62,000 miles per hour around our sun,
130 miles per second through our galaxy,
And all tilts and whirls at my unmooring
from what I thought was fixed, and I grip
my garden chair to keep from falling,
resist the force that soon will fling
me from the center to the edge
because I want the ride
to last awhile more.
—
Wendi White, raised in the Adirondack mountains, is a poet and educator now musing among the geckoes and ginger scented ridges of Oʻahu. She earned her MFA from Old Dominion University’s Creative Writing Program in Virginia and was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her first collection of poems, Turtle Island Rising, is forthcoming. When not at her writing desk, she advises students from across the Asia-Pacific region.
