Man Friday
We catch sight of him as we sail by,
a head down man-speck
foot-printing the shore, then veering off
into the dark interior, searching for his tribe.
He spoke their language once,
but now his Anglo-Saxon-twisted tongue
chokes on their consonants.
He sees their eyes roll skyward,
knows they’re dreaming of
the taste of him, and how
his stranger’s head will look, shrunk small.
It’s time to leave.
Torn between two ways of being,
head in one place, heart elsewhere,
what can he do but pace
the wet, white shore as if it were
a prison yard, grieving for the man
who suddenly appeared, who knew
the workings of the sun, and yet
could never learn to catch a single fish,
in all that teeming sea.
Eyes blind to our small boat,
he scans the sea for ships that bring
that other kind of man,
the one who found him, named him, left,
and promised to return.
Page(s) 20
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