The Tradewinds: Maui 1975
From The Tradewinds, Chapter One
Friday, April 28. 1975
In the middle of the Pacific Ocean there’s a small island shaped like the number eight. As the morning sun peels away its shadows, you can see, at the end of one of the volcanic fingers that stretch away from its north shore beaches, a rundown Craftsman style cottage, the home of Morgan Blake and his parents. In the morning, and in the bedroom at the back of the house, you can almost invariably find Morgan, pecking away at his typewriter, smiling and furrowing his brow, rolling in a sometimes “fine frenzy.”
A few vertebrae pop into place as Morgan sits up straight and away from his desk. The clock on the shelf above the typewriter reads 5:35am. He takes a deep breath, sets down his pen and thesaurus, and begins to read his composition aloud:
"As the sun set far away over East India
Signaling the pastel-end of another Naga day
In the middle of the expansive and placid Pacific
That same celestial lantern was,
Like a seasoned actor,
Quietly rehearsing its island encore,
On fire is the sky at dawn when
Gentle winds blow lightly, almost silently
Over the red and recalcitrant earth, while
The silver-tongued clouds of the night jump the color
Wheel, and shed the fleeting chill of their dark half-day
Ebony gives way to indigo as the stars seem
To disappear, invisible but never intangible.
Fingers of light strike first the great volcano
Then fill the flatland cane fields, flooding
The island with a thousand shades of shadowy green."
“There, I’ve captured morning...
Morgan Blake, the seventeen-year-old poet laureate of the islands,” he said smiling.
