Cocked above the snakeskinned sea
I think of the Jamaican rummer
black with blue shards in his eyes
like glass stuck in a corkscrew shell.
His ship blew against the coast in 1700
and onto that spit he stuck, cockle-fast.
Is paradise a naked shore?
or is it a reminder
that man’s a crab, no soul
among the marbled shells,
the mussel husks
as godless as
the bottles.
What balls to be as bald as this.
Enough to scare the Jesus
out of Portuguese converters
and get them singing hymns to
the fish eagles, mad on the beach
with shark bite stigmata
and the untuned radio of waves.
The air turns paper damp and
files down rank,
until man can crawl inside
the shell, and, with a bow
take his place amongst the elements.
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