-Drop of island-

Lying 3 nautical miles off the southwest coast of Martha's Vineyard 

No Man's Land

There’s a cold history told in the surface

rust of unexploded ordnance.

Sometime in the 1940s the U.S. Navy
lobbed its rehearsed volatility into the kettle-ponds
and outwashed plains of No Man's Land 

scattering to anxious flight, the Island’s nocturnal
Leach’s Storm-Petrel.

Now they won’t let me in— 
even with my hands tucked 

harmlessly into their pockets.

Picture the outer cliffs to the south 
as standing their ground against the sea, 

pushing its aggravated agenda 
into the face of the scaling clays 
who form the barrier heights 

protecting the inland habitat of mysterious 
No Man’s Land.

Now they have to stop the overland prints
of the aggressive Silver Poplar. 

And why not?

It doesn’t belong there
any more than they say I belong there.

Purple Loosestrife roam like nomads 
uninvited in a closed geography.

Too smitten a defendant against the allure of the Strife, 
the indigenous habitat yields.

I guess it's the same with me.

Human intrusion is coincident 
to the spread of the stubborn Phragmites, 

the invasive species pushing native plant-life around
like the bully it is.

But I just want to look, walk bare-footed on the sand,

whistling sea-shanties to weather along the tides of saltwater.

I’ve never embraced the squatter’s intent, 

nor dropped a metal round 
to oxidize upon the barren 

sweep of the cobble-spit, 

exposing a back-side as if presenting,
finned and ready.

Tell them I have no heart to stand defiantly 

in the midst of having no standing.

Tell them I'll promise not to take to root.

God-damn the bloodless 

shells of the bombs!

I just want to set my feet on 

No Man’s Land for chrisssake !