A Theory of Paradise Imbedded in Reality: poem by Douglas L. Talley

shoreline, image by njbateman526, on Pixabay, slightly modified

A Theory of Paradise Imbedded in Reality

Something in nature struggles for reality,

an island off the coast of Belize, no less,

where water stretches deep blue for miles

well beyond a salt and pepper sand

to speak the notion of distant paradise.

The island only cares to be an island

with the sturdy British name of Bannister

and cares only to remain just an island

with no pretense whatsoever of paradise,

not in a name that smells of handrails,

nor in the shadows of cloud laid out

flat black on the waters like an oil spill.

Yet something in the easy, easy task

to be and remain only what already is

will still defy acceptance of reality.

How the mind insists on paradise

instead, the fanciful and euphoric.

On an island with no ambition beyond

a flat of sand, a single grackle whistles

from the crown of a coconut palm

and grows so lost in the tree’s foliage

and swollen green fruit, so completely

blurred into the halo of the sun’s aura,

the bird disappears altogether into song.                

One sees only light, hears only voice,

and wants now to name the apparition

“Cherubim” with a flaming sword

to guard the way of the Tree of Life.

But paradise? In the old story such

a paradise never managed to hold

more than two souls, both innocent

and sinless, with the woman restless

for an understanding of good and evil

and the man content to remain content

with a steady diet of figs and mangos.

With change came naked reality,

a window into the soul of another,

but a window with a blind often drawn,

or even shut, paradise not lost but

buried in the soul, paradise waiting

to be found in what is, with nothing

hidden, nothing, as the Nazarene

proposed, that time will not reveal.

The true nature, for instance, of this

ocean island and the grackle’s easy

song hides in a salt and pepper sand once

called “a mere spit of mud in the ocean.”

Perhaps a theory of any earthly paradise

centered in a primordial garden can only

begin in the presence of two alone, achieved

in simple conversations and gestures of give

and take, like an ocean’s correspondence                  

with the shoreline. When the tide pulls

something of this earth into its soul—

the scrabble of a few shells, a wash of sand,

a strand of seaweed—the waters only return

in purity after lifting and distilling skyward

first, then restoring again with rainfall some

trace of heaven to the shore, a state of mind           

in a drift of song for two and two alone.

Scripture reference: Luke 8:17

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Douglas Talley has BFA and MFA degrees in creative writing and a JD degree. His poems

and essays have appeared in various journals, including The American Scholar, Cimarron Review, and Christianity and Literature. As a lawyer, he

has advocated various environmental and social justice causes, including the recovery of Jewish assets confiscated by Nazis during World War II. Presently, he leads a writers’ workshop for inmates in a women’s prison.

September 2025 issue