The Goddess named Regret

You could have seen it coming,
had you not been surrounded
by endless azure,
that blue mirror,
the echoing sky.

When she told you she was
leaving-- she was clear that
the evacuation
wasn't only of your island,
but the whole
male archipelago.

You told her that she'd prefer to drown,
than live on a raft. That she'd only
be airlifted to another
crumbling spit of sand.

Then there are your brothers' shipwrecks;
frozen as they wade ashore, islands
malformed of broken-bits.
Ships listing in the silt, ground down
to shoreline by the absent
lapping away at the foots of their beds.

You could have noticed the warning signs:
Time scraped on, a pale beggar
hobbling down a wide strand,
as buildings shot from the shoreline
meeting the sky halfway.

You could have seen her eyes water,
and not believed her bit
about the sour sea air.

You could have decided
not to call her that name, the one
derived from an Indian goddess,
but meaning surly bitch.

You could have stopped
pounding into her
all those reminders
of being shipwrecked...