A runaway pondered his adjectives,
More than many years ago on St Croix,
Where he squatted down by the docks and watched
A looming cruise ship occupy the bay.
This would have been a good time to sort things,
But what remained uppermost in his mind
Was not survival, finding his way home,
Keeping whole his brittle bones, or breakfast,
None of which he grasped or had a plan for,
But how best to depict this ludicrous
Juxtaposition of island and boat,
Where the island was a low, blurred green smudge
And the boat a gleaming white colossus.
He stared up at that floating cliff of bow
And decided it was like Moby Dick
Attempting to mount a guppy. Ok.
A snarky image, sort of worked, he thought,
And he kept it in mind through subsequent
Days, weeks, months, years, and decades of somehows,
Through which, without succeeding, he survived.
Penniless, scruffy, disabled, at home
Between treatments for an advanced cancer,
A man with a ragged beard considered
Now would be a good time to sort things, if
He knew how, but what floated through his thoughts
Was that vast, blank cruise ship, just past the docks.
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