Island Man Summary

The poem consists of five stanzas in free verse, which means there is no set meter or rhyme. An omniscient speaker describes an “island man” in the third person, who wakes up in the morning. The man imagines the sound of the ocean, with waves breaking. He imagines seabirds, fisherman, and a sunrise. This imagined scene is from a “small emerald island” that he always returns to “groggily.” He hears a roar of traffic, which muffles the imagined scene and brings him back to his current reality, in bed. He lifts himself up for “another London day.”