On the docks the stevedores, shirtless and glistening, appear as Greek statues in motion. They move only as fast as they have to, eighty-pound sacks
of sugar or coffee on their backs. Behind the town the jungle hisses and hums. The trees are covered with thick moss as if the loose ground were
climbing up to claim them. The light is so strong it bares the rivers hidden within thick leaves; even the giant canopies spread vast like the awnings
of seedy flophouses or bars. This light makes even the shade seek a further darkness. The bell approaches and, for a while, the end of work. Even the hammocks
take siestas here. There is a relationship between the ambient heat and the bright color on the wash lines wrapped loose around the women’s thighs.
It is not a linear one. A gaggle of missionaries disembarks from a rusted ark moored at pier thirty-three. They were white like potatoes
but the sun, the unrelenting sun, has baked them into beets. The bodily fluid most often exchanged here is sweat. But there are others traded
in the earliest morning while the saved sleep deeply. After the port bell rings the docks quickly clear and the beers of the American expatriates
grow warm on their quayside tables. The veins of tar in the road melt to some hellish licorice as they deal the afternoon’s cards. Now it is easy
to imagine the British Raj, its supply lines thinned like malarial blood. Only the ants are still busy. What is the sun to them, worshipping their queen?
Some lines in praise of burial at sea
Let me just say how much I’ve always loved seafood. White, pink, red—no matter. I’ve loved running a knife through that soft fish flesh, separating muscle from spine and rib. And then the taste!
There were my early inclinations to marine biology. I feel I owe these creatures the chance to observe my dropping body, their big eyes curious as I stare back with light-lost and soul-lost globes at their many forms, the wonder of their hidden world.
It comes down to cycles, to return. Carbon, nitrogen, the trace elements my body only keeps in trust. So back into the mix with them.
And who doesn’t love a sea story? A mystery? What’s left of me might fraternize with the remains of pirates, sailors, mermaids.
All my friends and family will be gathered at the rail in fellowship, in a mourning awash in the dawn’s light. Splash! Bubbles, then, for a moment—
who will take the first bite, which fish will run the white blades of his teeth into the manna of this slowly falling, spiraling flesh?
The guests will then dine on oysters, making a necklace of the rocky shells while I rest, at last, in a peaceful descending repose.
Michael J. Galko is a retired scientist and active poet from Houston, TX. He is the artist responsible for ‘haiku house’, a residential art installation consisting of hundreds of original wood-burned and painted haiku. He was a finalist in the 2020 Naugatuck River Review and the 2022 Bellevue Literary Review poetry contests. Recent poems appear in Spillway Magazine, Atlanta Review, Silk Road Review, and Plainsongs.
