Patterns:

Stanzas organized by following the main areas of the figure/map describing wave activity around the island

Starting outwards and working inwards –

wave crest traveled ->reflected -> refracted -> island

Lines are sequenced by alphabetizing second word following the initial “I’ll” of each line (these always begin with ‘w’

wade, walk, want, wash, waste, water, weave, weep (breaks the pattern), weaken, weather, west, whine, whisk, whisper, whoop, win, wink, withdraw, witness, worry, wound, write, wrong

The “Refracted” stanza breaks these patterns by beginning its initial two line without “I’ll” at the start and disrupting the alphabetical order (going between weather and west). They look like this:

[‘weird’]. [‘welcome’]. [‘watch’].

[ what will you do ]

They work much as the island does to break the pattern of incoming waves and their reflection, carrying on part of the incoming wave forward in a limping re-vectored at new angles.

The poem repeats the speaker self reference in almost every line with “I’ll” and collapses the speaker and reader as the reader becomes the speaker when the reader thinks or recites aloud “I’ll” that originally referred to the speaker now is internalized as the I of the reader and yet still in isolation…I am an island and my reactions to stimuli or incoming waves as I perform the actions of wading, walking, wanting, washing, wasting, watering, weaving, weeping, weakening, weathering, westing, whining, whisking, whispering, whooping, winning, winking, withdrawing, witnessing, worrying, wounding, writing, wronging pass on the redirected momentums of the stimuli as refracted waves onward in the vast ocean or web of intersubjective relations…no island is an island as it sits in the same sea as other islands and the waves modified by one island impact the others in altered ways as a result