Petit Manan
by Leah Nath

boardwalk greasy with entangled seaweed, the rickety path to my summer blossomed open towards the ten acres of
land yanked out of the ocean floor. with virgin hands in a house of experts, the
endless waves surrounding us mimicked the vast open emptiness of my
mind
as we endeavored to catch all the numbers raining down from wind-borne wings for the next two months

sometimes, it felt like nothing existed but sound on Little Island:
the terns’ screeching caws and smarting smacks over the head coupled with
their chicks’ hoarse and ceaseless braying underfoot,
the puffin moans and guillemot twitters carrying across the waters, the sparrow and petrel songs whispering through
the night—my
existence was seeping into the endless vibrations and reverberations of foreign languages, all
words
lost
on me, but the meaning
known,
all the same

the constant cacophony only served to make the rare moments of quiet that much more deafening, like when i held
my first bird:
the adrenaline pounded through the blue rivers of my hands, my
hands wrapped around the delicate doll-skeleton of a tern, sweat clumped the feathers surrounding my neon pink-
tipped fingers and slimy, regurgitated, beautiful bird breakfast sat on my lap (one
filmy fish eye pressed into my mother’s retired scrubs and the other staring unflinchingly up at me). my insides were
dominated by the drum of blood in my eardrums and the throbbing heartbeat hammering beneath my fingerprints
inside of that musty, tool-scattered red rain shed when our irises
knew
each other for a moment

and, too, when
standing at the top of our 130-step, 170-year-old, second-tallest lighthouse in Maine,
binoculars and clicker at the ready,
surrounded by water and water and water,

sky and sky and sky,
staring down at the haven of dirt where our oft-trekked paths were etched, squiggly and ant-like in the towering
grasses, and my breath left forgotten on the rusty artisan stairs—

the force and power of the wind whistled a drowning and desperate symphony of empty sky into me as though
yelling a love letter to nothingness to make it better heard (the
romancing of the air is written into my lungs now)

worst, when the banks of floating sea rolled in, pushing the mainland smell of pines out to be replaced by petrichor
and the melancholy scent of the color gray, we sat,
trapped, inside for fear of forcing the cold to eat at the chicks unnecessarily, and cowed helplessly by the shrieking
laughs of gulls. finally creeping out to greet the cautious sun and kiss our adopted children hello again, finally
breathing in free-range air, finally
holding our downy darlings once more

i reached down to grab chick B, nest 5, plot 2, thirteen grams (less than a single teaspoon of sugar), wingspan 23
millimeters, but my hands flew to my throat, noose wrapped around my esophagus and brain fogged over with the
smell of stale bird poop on my clothes (why
are there so many flies?) mouth
open, clogged

full of

maggots

dead, i
didn’t hear anything at all right then, forgot
the rules of life death; thrown

from the nest and left drowned, i
was surrounded by the
indifference of the earth and the water, the nonsensical pattern still itself, though with
an appreciation of its necessity all the same

the scale managed to tip with time, as another chick fledged, and
another, wobbling and unsteady, on young wings, adolescent and innocent, children leaving me an
empty-nester on the island Mother of Survivors

by the time july began to die, the silver sci-fi government-owned boat was drifting away from Little Island’s little white house, our
little house decorated with a large family of Cheez-It boxes, blush birthday streamers, decades of bird lists, drawings
and names and poems, a washed-up lobster skeleton;
the wind of Milbridge serenaded me for the last time, bringing the melody of the island all the way to the
shore of the mainland

then,
step off the boat, onto unsteady feet and an entire continent, more grounded and farther away from the salt of my
veins than i had been in months; now,
trees,
roads,
and utter, breath-stealing stillness; i listen
to the nothingness and know i’ve become deaf without my little island, the dream of the summer’s aria rattling
around in my mind forever

~

Leah Nath is a current undergraduate student at Gettysburg College, where she is working to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree in Environmental Studies with a Writing minor. Her passions lie with poetry, art, and the outdoors, which she hopes to combine into a career of caring for the Earth by communicating its beauty and value with art.

Featured image: Sunset on Petit Manan. Photograph by Leah Nath, 2024.

Artist Statement: After spending two full months living on a remote island off the coast of Maine, I had a difficult time adjusting to mainland life again; the noise, the people, the lack of birds a shock to my system after getting used to such a different way of living. In this piece, I wanted to capture the feeling of becoming part of Petit Manan island, trying to learn the language of the land and the birds, and then the feeling of loss and change once I left.