Block Island waits 12 miles off our South County coastline. It is patient in its waiting, its brooding headlands often shrouded in mist, its northern tip rattling a million moonstones with each curl of the surf. Sometimes it seems impossibly far away, a speck that flickers at the edge of sight, then disappears. Other times you can stand on the beach at Matunuck and almost touch it as it floats on a pale summer sea.

Block Island is something to aspire to, a trip there a kind of reward. Riding over on the ferry from Point Judith you can quite literally feel worry recede into the mainland distance. As the island looms closer, people around you are smiling. There is laughter onboard and a happy feeling of anticipation.

I once flew high over the island in a jetliner on a sunny summer morning. I could see the entire place at once. It looked like a perfect little green painting of itself, set against all that empty ocean. I will never forget it.

Jeanpaul Ferro understands well that Block Island is far more than just a beautiful scrap of land in the Atlantic. He realizes it is also a powerful idea of release. This idea was on his mind when he set out to write a collection of poems strictly for himself. After 20 years of writing what he thought others would like, he had arrived at the decision that he would no longer be dependent on the whims of any editor or publishing house. His collection, called Jazz, was going to be exactly the way he wanted it to be, and its writing would be free of any external pressure.

It turned out to be a remarkably liberating experience, full of possibility. As Jeanpaul puts it: “When I got to the end of the process, I needed one final poem to sum up the entire episode — something that could be an exclamation point at the end of the collection. I thought about my many trips to Sandy Point and the wonderful freeness one feels on that little green jewel off the south coast of Rhode Island. How could I sum up the feeling of letting it all go? This is how ‘Mohegan Bluffs’ was born. The idea of never desiring anything is a right-hand turn in life. It heightens everything, because you honestly stop expecting or hoping for what you think you might need. The poem took about two minutes to create, but it was over 22 years in the making.”

Jeanpaul Ferro is a poet and novelist whose work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize four times. He will be the featured writer in the August issue of the online journal Contemporary American Voices. He’s Rhode Island born and raised, and lives with his wife in Richmond.

Mohegan Bluffs

The ghosts sail out from the Charlestown

Breachway every night at dusk,

the wind filling their sails, shadow filled,

all these tiny pewter disks shining atop the

waves,

and sometimes you can hear them saying:

I just want to go home;

and they sail out into the Great Salt Pond

into the middle of Block Island, where the

parking is always free;

where all our familiar dreams go on vacation;

and when you’re ready maybe you’ll go there

too;

out into the mystery of happiness —

you and God in a perfect place,

out into this little secret that lasts no longer

than a second:

 never desire anything.

— Jeanpaul Ferro