The story goes that two brothers found an icon, miraculously preserved in the bay and started to build an island with a view to building a church there.
After 200 years, with the help of locals ferrying and dumping rocks, and pirate ships caught by a chain across the inlet to the bays and then sunk with lots of rocks in them, the island was completed and a Roman Catholic Church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary was built on top.
We visited as part of a tourist cruise, noting the original icon of Mary and Jesus, plus the extensive 'Queen of Heaven' imagery in the church.
Meanwhile, thunder and lightning raged nearby over the mountains while fires raged on nearby hills. So I wrote a poem...
Our Lady of the Rock
Hail! Queen of sea and heaven,
Crowned amid the bay;
Crowned upon a throne
Built on centuries
Of faith,
Rocks,
And pirate wrecks.
Distant lightning
Flickers across an angry sky.
Thunder menaces
And fire erupts
From mountainsides.
Perhaps the Almighty
Is a Protestant
After all?
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