Wandering loner
Broken by Life
Pharmaceutically numbed
Descendant of slaves
Chibuike’s mistake was speaking out
Against the regime, which thanked him
With ten years of hard labor under the whip.
How he came to be in the Maritimes no one knew.
Mostly now, he took odd jobs,
Smoked weed, and kept to himself
Neither fast nor sleek,
A schooner designed in the days when
Men (they were all men) towed their
Seines by sail and guano factories filled
Wooden buildings at dock’s end
The days when wooden ships and
Iron men conquered the seas.
Long since retired, replaced
By trawlers that scrape vast
Swaths of ocean without regard
For coral or dolphin, with no thought
To the reality that soon there will be no fish.
She sat dockside for decades collecting
Long tentacles of seaweed and
Dense colonies of barnacles,
Her hemp lines and cotton sails rotting.
He got her for a song after the harbormaster,
At the urging of the community, condemned her.
They say masters and canines, as well as
Long-married couples, look alike.
So it was with Chibuike and his vessel –
His long hair matted into wads of unkept
Dreads matching the strands of kelp.
Black hull to match his black face.
Both unkept. Both weathered.
Both had seen better days.
He spoke to few, scavenged the beaches,
And labored dawn to dusk.
Her hull was sound, her bones good,
Planes, axes, saws, knives, anvil, hammer and nails,
Cutting, fitting, shaving, shaping
He searched cedar swamps for the
Perfect trees to shape into spars,
Braiding line and sewing canvas below
Decks during rain storms and blizzards,
Diving, swimming, scraping the hull in summer,
Caulking, painting, varnishing, refitting, polishing
Nearly three years passed before the
Newly christened Omega
(her name painted in gold script on her transom)
Set sail – Mains’il, mizzen, a pair of jibs
Filled by a 12-knot southerly breeze,
She heeled slightly to port on starboard tack
As she glided out of the harbor, and
Past the lighthouse to the cheers and
Waves of pleasure sailors and Coasties.
His dreads ruffled in the wind
As he stood sentinel at the helm with
Leather face and calloused hands.
He caught the Westerlies to Great Britain,
Through Gibraltar to the Med, then
Caught the Trades through the
Indian Ocean to the South Pacific.
They joined him near Samoa, the three
Bare-chested women
All fleeing from
Bear-chested men.
True to her name, Salamasina
Rescued the others –
Inina, beaten into shy submissiveness,
And Aolani, who dreamt of lounging on clouds –
Deep bronze flesh complimenting
Chibuike’s dark black skin.
Gale-force winds buffeted as
Close-hauled, the foursome,
Muscles straining, hands bleeding,
Kept Omega headed up around the
Cape that swallowed many a sailor,
And set widows to wailing.
Twenty-foot waves
Icy salt water caked their eyes,
His beard, their long hair
Gallons poured over the transom
Hand-pumps sprinted
Mains’il furled, storms’il reefed
Her timbers groaned, but, like a
Hereford bull in a midwest blizzard,
She tenaciously ploughed on.
At first it was a relief to be without
Wind and waves and stinging spray,
But the doldrums eat away like termites
On a person’s sanity.
Blistering hot sun, still air, not a hint of a
Catspaw, nor a stirring of life,
She sat in irons day after day after curséd day.
Throats parched, lips cracked, four sun-scorched
Vagabonds waiting to die, when a stanza from
Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Escaped Aolani’s lips,
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
Ever the dreamer, Aolani gazed
Heavenward as she recited and spotted, far aloft
A frigate bird soaring on updrafts,
Now heading towards Omega,
She seemed to somehow be pulling
Clouds behind her, as if invisibly tethered.
Aolani cried out, Salamasina scoffed, Inina never looked up,
But with eyes dried almost shut, Chibuike shaded his face with
Sunburnt hands and found the strength to stand.
Frigate bird towing clouds grew closer,
She swept down towards Omega
Tilted her wings like Blue Angles in formation
Aolani swore she saw her smile, (only to be
Rebuked by Salamasina)
As the frigate bird encircled, the clouds engulfed
Ship and crew; a cool foggy mist revived
Eyes and skin and lips and tongues
As grey clouds gently washed them with soft rain.
Omega rocked side to side with joy,
Salamasina, Inina, Aolani, and Chibuike
Held hands and danced on the aft deck,
Faces to the sky, mouths agape to the rain,
Which soon filled pots and pans and small barrels.
They stripped off their clothes and splashed and
Bathed and drank and laughed and danced for joy;
Frigate bird swooped across their heads, let out a call
To the clouds and the breeze swelled.
Salamasina and Chibuike hoisted mains’il,
Mizzen, and jibs, which quickly bloomed;
Planks creaked and Omega pushed onward
On a broad reach – it took both Inina and Aolani,
Still laughing, to steady the helm.
Day after day, they had fair weather and
Following seas; day after day, the frigate bird
Was their guide. They ignored the compass and
Followed their avian pilot; she showed them
Schools of fish to feed their hunger, eddies to
Speed their journey to the unknown.
Inina spotted it first – the top of the dormant
Volcano above the white clouds; the island
Came into view as they approached – the
Frigate bird sounding their arrival to a
Natural sheltered harbor where, at long last,
They dropped anchor.
It was then that the seabird guide bid them farewell
With what they swore was a bow.
The island appeared deserted, and
Indeed, after thorough exploration,
Was confirmed to be so.
Here were cliffs covered in blue-footed boobies,
Beaches commanded by centuries-old tortoises.
Here, finches flitted and sang amongst palms that
Stood sentinel over birds-of-paradise.
Underground rivers fed bubbling springs of
Clear, pristine, sweetwater.
Hot springs fed a turquoise pool where
The foursome bathed and relaxed in their
Private spa as gentle breezes wafted above.
This place, it turns out, is not on any chart.
According to academics, it does not exist.
Its flora and fauna are incompatible with
Its longitude and latitude, and, though one
Can see storms and waves in the distance and
From them surmise hurricanes and blizzards,
Here, it is always springtime.
Here, too, between the bird and turtle eggs and
An abundance of ono in shallow
Pools nearly asking to be picked up, there is
Plenty of food.
Here, they sat around the evening fire and
Related the stories of their pasts –
Inina, in the middle of six children,
Mostly ignored by busy parents,
An arranged marriage when she was
Sixteen to a fat old drunk who slapped
Her around and pimped her out to his
Drinking buddies.
Aolani, who loved literature and poetry,
Who kept a diary of her verses, who loved
Birds and flowers and dreamt of university,
Of becoming an artist and a poet.
Aolani, who was likewise married off as a
Teenager to a boy she’d grown up with,
A friend of the family, who was nice and kind
And caring until one afternoon, when, at the
Shipyard where he worked, a beam
Fell on his head, spitting his skull. He
Lay in a coma for months. No one expected
Him to live, but awaken he did, albeit in
Frightening persona – he raged and cursed,
Threatened, threw hammers, pointed guns;
She cowered in corners until
Salamasina came along, who had herself
Been beaten by a drunk unemployed husband
Until she, filled with rage, fought back,
Knocked him out and down a flight of
Concrete steps where he lay dying. She
Knew she had to flee the paternalistic
Justice system and knew the stories of
Her neighbors Inina and Aolani, it being
A small town where most everyone knew
Most everything.
Salamasina almost physically picked up
Inina and Aolani and carried them to the
Harbor where they swam to Chibuike’s Omega
Seeking refuge. Chibuike always had a heart for
The broken outcasts, having grown up in
An African village under the thumb of a brutal
Dictator known for feeding his enemies to
Crocodiles, stuffing ballots, and demanding worship.
All it took was attending a protest rally to put him
In a cage every night, feed him on maggot-infested
Slop, and work him in a mine 14 hours a day.
A decade passed before he saw his chance and ran
Boxcars and stolen bicycles across the mountains to the
Sea where on an old tub of a freighter he labored
As a mechanic’s helper in a roaring engine room
Spitting oil until they arrived in Halifax.
Four refugees from life –
Salamasina, Inina, Aolani, and Chibuike
Walked the beaches of their private
Paradise, ate of Neptune’s abundance,
Bathed in pools of the Pegaeae, sailed in and out of
The coves along the shoreline in Omega.
Broken schooner and broken people –
Omega, Salamasina, Inina, Aolani, and Chibuike
Found healing in one another, grew in
Love for one another, and cared for
One another as the years passed under the
Blanket of the Milky Way – their love
Heralded by shooting stars and quivering
Emerald lights; their days concluding with
Triple rainbows and leaping dolphins and
Fluke-slapping whales, as tiny crabs crawled
Over their bare feet and across Omega’s decks.
Months passed before he came –
Out of a rainbow, he descended from
The galaxies – majestic, noble, glistening with
Beams of blue light – a diadem of flowers on his
Brow, energy like electric currents shooting from his
Fingertips, dreadlocks to his knees, a golden sword to
Compliment his deep bronze face, a robe of stars.
As he moved, floating a foot or two above the ground,
Strange ethereal music swelled, along with choruses sung
By turtles, birds, lizards, and flowers, as the wind kept time.
He gestured and Salamasina, Inina, Aolani, Chibuike, and
Omega floated aloft with him – softly gently, slowly
Swirling in the air, around and around
Lost in the music of love.