During the summer of 1995, I had the occasion to take a one hour helicopter tour in Hawaii. Departing from the airport on Maui we had a perfect Birdseye view of the renowned resort destinations along the Kaanapali coast and the less traveled island of Lanai across the nine mile ocean channel. However, it was on the far side of the third island, Molokai, where we could see from high above the small array of buildings that, more than a century earlier, was the leper colony of Father Damien. In the fourth stanza of this poem, I make reference to the many words of Milton, written during the 17th century regarding the fall of humankind in the Garden of Eden, and then contrast it to the one word that is the foundation of the Christian faith, which I reveal at the end of the fifth stanza.  With respect to my reference to a place "I was destined to know" in the third stanza, I am speaking not about the island or the colony, but instead the spiritual place where they were and I now am. Challenged, like so many others, by the spectre of a potentially fatal illness. Finally, the "vantage most high" I identify near the end of this poem is a reference to undying faith not a mere flight. Paradise Found is a retrospective look at a most unique place in the history of faith, which when I first saw it as a tourist, was nothing more than a passing curiosity.