“Peace does not mean to be in a place
where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work.
It means to be in the midst of those things
and still be calm in your heart.”
— Anonymous

Wisdom, it turns out,
can live on a refrigerator magnet.
I needed these words —
after a month on the mainland,
city after city,
traffic jam after traffic jam,
my teeth on edge,
lungs parched with the dust of urgency.

Between the asphalt and the glass,
small oases shimmer —
greens and blues,
pines, firs, roiling rivers —
brief reprieves
in the mad rush of civilization.

I live on a speck of earth
in the Pacific,
a place too quiet
for most people —
which is a blessing.
Tradewinds cool the air,
the ocean breathes around us,
and hula’s soft gestures
mirror the island’s rhythm,
its marriage of strength and grace.

Yet the question returns:
what is peace,
if it can only be found
where peace already reigns?
Am I meant to test myself
in the noise and mayhem,
to measure my progress
by endurance?

If so, I fail —
not dramatically,
but tenderly.
My skin draws tight,
grief lodges like a stone.
The distance between my daughters
and this island
is both balm and wound,
Prometheus chained
to love and letting go.

I see others aging quickly
beneath the weight of loss,
and I ask myself:
how to keep choosing happiness
when separation
is the constant undertow?

Perhaps detachment
is less about turning away
and more about softening
into what is.
Those who preach it
may never have held
their own children’s futures
in their hands,
then released them
to fly toward other lives.

As always,
there is purpose in the pain —
something new being born
beneath the ache.

So I return to what is steady:
the sea,
the home,
the hands that cook and tend,
the husband,
the dogs,
the mystery.

And I write.
I write.

Memorial ~ BJ 2020