Short Prose Piece

Stewart Island, Kapipi Bay, 2010, March 9

Very likely the manifestation of the word solitude. I have never been somewhere so quiet. My own words, as I often speak aloud, I respectfully swallowed. I can hear everything here--even little changes in the way the water is lapping at the rocks makes me glance up, wondering what creature has moved the rhythm of the bay. The only other noise comes from dueling birds, singing each other out of tree and nest. There are bright yellow spots on a rock--like mustard rust. Marigold time. That's what time feels like here--golden, frozen in bloom. The turn of this page resonates. I can hear myself blink. I can hear myself be. Stewart, how did your island come to be, or rather come to stay, so silent? Here, close to Antarctica, this patch of the end of the world more resembles the beginning, which would explain why I, in all my modernity, feel like such an intruder.