The Breeze

The ocean around that island
where she lived seldom calmed down.
The island itself was almost never visible
to any living eye, except perhaps
to those November birds on their way to winters.
It was always misted over with fine salt spray.
 
It was a tiny island of sand,
a little patch of grassy earth and
that old, twisted and gnarled oak,
which had no reason to be there, but still was!
She was thankful for it though,
for its branches were her home.
 
Every morning she would leave just at dawn
to visit the little kids on an island a few hours away.
Just for a few minutes she remained there
basking and warming in the midday sun,
before she turned and returned
back to her own oak, her own island.
 
It seldom rained where the kids lived,
but every day they smelt its hope in those minutes.
For every day, the breeze would collect
the heady petrichor off her salt dampened
patch of grassy oaken earth, and fly it across
those ocean hours, as a beacon of a promise to be kept.