Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Trio, Marooned
“Jicks and I thought we’d avoid the jealously thing, if you...?
We shared you?”
But Marnie tells them she’s a Jill seeking another.
Jicks and Bell agree it’s just bad luck.
They continue to work on the large dugout canoe.
On huge-moon nights they have heard faint slapping noises
from a nearby island. Why the women washed clothes at that
hour makes for much speculation.
They decide on a night raid, to kidnap three. Marnie just
laughs when they ask how she can be sure she’ll pick a Jill.
Comes the raid, finally, and the sea turns rougher than Bell
has planned, the moon obscured by low clouds. They come
tantalizingly close, the laundry song booming in the stormy
atmospherics. Lightning illuminates the mass of women.
Then the canoe is swept out into the further, stroboscopic
ocean, where the rain eventually ceases.
Their luck changes at first light when they’re picked up by a
Chinese freighter.
The women doctor treats them equally, but with a tiny smile
towards Marnie.
Who lives in Beijing presently; the men have successfully married,
but dream the laundry song of moonlit nights.
Labels: Beijing, Chinese, jealously, marooned, moonlight, raid, rescue
Monday, April 07, 2014
Bali Hi
Castaway
The company sent a team to search the island.
The women proved not as diligent as the men, and
separated to skinny dip.
Holbart saw them from his hiding place and it upset him.
To the extent that he looked for an opportunity to cull one.
Rae cooperated by digging through her messy backpack for
a comb as the others dressed and left.
“I was always the mope,” she explained to him.
But a strong swimmer. They went to a nearby island to avoid
even more searchers the next day or so.
Moonless, but he knew the stars.
“Yeah,” she remarked, “it’s all there in there.”
Three years, and she wonders if her sister married.
Everything else working out.
Labels: castaway, island, rescue, search
