Beyond the masts, the ocean is turquoise, interrupted only by progression of power boats
in midfield, passing with short, white wakes and nothing after, all the way to the humps
of islands, with haze above blending to cumulus and building beyond to cumulonimbus,
holding risk of thunder that will never come out of the azure sky all the world lies under,
while in the hotel, the air conditioner hums like flutter of a helicopter, though the wings
of a honeyeater, that has vanished from the rail of the balcony outside the glass, are silent.
Revenants of that moment of presence, knocking like taps on cerebral cisterns, are silent
as impotent angels watching over all those who travel through time on solar winds, in boats
crass as the Starship Enterprise, sure as the titans holding black holes travel on light wings,
screaming along canyons of hostile spice planets, dodging lasers from dromedary humps
of alien mechanical camels, war elephants of gods forgotten, whose dominion we are under,
those whose strikes leave black cylinders of glass on beaches, falling from cumulonimbus.
Children stream, in light raincoats, out of school, as a storm bursts from cumulonimbus.
One finds a honeyeater with a broken wing and keeps it in a box. All angels are silent
when the bird dies, so the child buries it, bruised by solemn parental admonition, under
the mulberry tree where the dead pets lie. Out at sea, oil-skinned fisherman in their boats
sing shanties to suppress fear of Leviathan rising from the deep, breaching many humps,
their sound a chorus to the death knell of chained sirens, of waxen angels moulting wings.
The ship’s captain cheeses his sailors in the mess, munching on celery and buffalo wings,
left over from lunch by passengers decked on lounges, oblivious to green cumulonimbus
billowing and towering above twin waterspouts, while a nervous cruise director humps
a mermaid in the aquarium of the boatswain’s cabin, a tight squeeze. The parrot, silent
witness, vows never to repeat the sounds learned while caged in similar scenes on boats
he’s sailed to strange lands over seven seas. All aboard are lost when the ship goes under.
The calm waters of the Whitsunday passage disguise pressures the divers are under
after the storm—many bodies to retrieve from the wreck. A parrot with red wings
chaperones the coast guard, screaming obscenities at rubberneckers in little boats.
A trawler nets a mermaid torso, tail gouged by a larger fish. Dark cumulonimbus
form throughout the afternoon, threatening another storm. The boatswain is silent
when hauled aboard, naked, but for his raincoat, never more to boast exotic humps.
Tourism here, slowly recovering from Covid, struggles through troughs and humps.
Small businesses hold hopes returning cruise ships will prevent them going under.
There’s little chatter now in the Chamber of Commerce, undertaking to remain silent
in support of that one industry that’s doing well. The rest subsist on salvaged wings
with blue cheese sauce and raise their fists in wrath against the raging cumulonimbus
out beyond the masts of the yachts moored in the harbour, beyond the power boats.
Beyond the masts, a strange fish with buffalo humps gnaws on cold chicken wings.
The last of the big game hunters dreams of marlin jumping under tall cumulonimbus,
while sails on booms swing silent into the wind. Maxi yachts outrun the little boats.