BALI HAI FOREVER

(From a splendid memory while visiting Moorea, French Polynesia on July 23, 1991

 By Myra Wexler Darwish 

While riding in an outrigger canoe 

Far from a Moorean shore, 

Lush emerald peaks were sighted, 

And my life would change forevermore.

I stared in a state of reverie,

 Hoping the moments would never end. 

Stilled by what I had longed to see, 

 So, memory could take it all in.

The small boat bobbed in the crystal sea,

 Resonating with my joy-filled heart.

Smaller was I than I ever could be, 

As the waves were breaking apart.   

Bali Hai “Is just a myth,”

 Yet she was there before my eyes. 

I clung to my moments of unbridled bliss, 

What was written as truth, in disguise.

The answer lies within my heart,

As a firm, insightful “No!”

 The sweetest moments will forever be, 

What our wisdom already knows.