(thanks Mr Wyatt & M. Moitessier)

Click on the bar below to listen to this piece read aloud
Alone on this blue ocean,
further out than all the rest,
amongst the other jetsam
he’s slowly going west,

Tangled up in lostnets,
dragging all that weed,
a sense of some direction
is very much in need.

Listening for signals,
looking out for signs
at birds and clouds and fishies,
he’s running out of lines.

“It’s a rum old time without it,
it’s really very weird –
this wreck knows where it’s going
even though it’s hardly steered.”

“I s’pose I’d best stay with it,”
he mutters to himself,
“I’m not cut out to be stuck on
the continental shelf.”

“No reskuas are coming
the turns have all turned back,
Albert Ross is just the punchline
of some tired sad leatherback.”

“Out on my horizon
the seen rolls up ‘n leaves.
I’ll try just waving back at it
and see what that achieves.”

On this well red ocean
he is heading for the reefs,
but that can’t be much worse to meet
than all the other griefs.

rs 8.1.15