The Castaway is Washed Ashore

The Castaway is Washed Ashore

The Castaway is Washed Ashore

She was the ship I sailed in, or
        We twinned as just one ship,
A Mother and a Son, assured
        Of one another’s grip.
We guessed it wouldn’t be for life,
A boy becalmed, a seasoned wife.

Whatever, there would come the storm,
         The light propitious fade;
Suburban living was the norm,
         A slovenly parade.
Which one would fall, which doomed to drown,
If climbing up were settling down?

The storm would blow us separately –
        For her, poor doctoring,
Stifled in her own blood’s sea,
          I, at her skirts to cling.
Then Education’s sad voice hit
My ears and I joined mine to it.

Out on the selfish ocean tossed,
        The storm now just a squall,
Apocalypse the only Cross
        At all empirical:
My placement was below the salt,
A setting? Or a Primal Fault?

A second ship – this was another
        Woman marked to die.
No strong resemblance to my Mother,
        But, like her, serving my
Absurd disintegration, taking
Her need beyond a quick forsaking.

Mixed metaphors sail on apace,
        The ship goes down and then
A second time the splintered face,
         A Castaway again –
A pair of ragged claws might row
Me safely from the undertow.

Quotations like a flag unfurled
        In cruel convenience
Showed my position in the world,
        The past my present tense.
As mushrooms, rose the childish faces,
A succulence of desert places.

As if in time’s conjunctions, I
        Flew past the sugared peaks
Of Greenland – portholes bled the sky
        For Frequent Flyer geeks –
Life had to make its proffered run
Between extinction and the sun.

Such was the beach I scrambled up,
          Like Crusoe seeming saved,
The storm still simmered in its cup
        Which through my dreams had raved.
The mind, that navigating hand,
Now sought to drown me on the land.