We read the same books as children - Kipling, Haggard, Stevenson - and dreamt adventure, but they went off, the boys, to much on sago grubs with cannibals, be rocked to sleep in a hold where rats and roaches rustled under the slap of a moon-starched sail, and on the volcano's steaming lip, pose for the camera, their calves fringed with leeches. Coming to adventure late, I'm not sure I'd savor grubs. I didn't join my Burmese bus companions when they dined with their right hands. On a tramp off Sumatra's coast, I held a scream, a bobbing bathtub toy in my throat, as two-inch roaches filed above my head. My bones ached to the marrow scrambling up to fourteen thousand feet. I envy the acceptance that accrues to cocks. They are the universal, catholic sex. Witch doctors don't ask wives why they've allowed their husbands out to roam the world alone. Green with begrudging as a young rice field, I'm a prurient curiosity, in my unorthodox sex, to the local men in foreign towns who hope, or else assume. They're shoals to navigate with care as I tack Malacca's strait, round Java's head, sails spread and bellying to cross the shadow line, gathering my way before the salty wind. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...HILL-SIDE TREE by MAXWELL BODENHEIM ONE WORD MORE by ROBERT BROWNING LULLABY by CHARLES LUTWIDGE DODGSON THE IRISH SPINNING-WHEEL by ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES THE RELIEF OF LUCKNOW (SEPTEMBER 25, 1857) by ROBERT TRAILL SPENCE LOWELL |