FROM THE S.S. MORAVIA RUN AGROUND OFF KAHALA POINT

You possess only whatever will not be lost in a shipwreck.

—El-Ghazali

Nights when the moon clears the mountains

and breaks through the clouds streaming seaward

the drowned and their baggage

can still be seen tumbling in the waves.

Women with billowing dresses, sailors in white.

A jumble of hats, shoes, and broken oars.

Then the cargo of ironwood and teak,

bales of hemp and casks of ambergris.

Goats and pigs in shattered pens.

A phalanx of Dutch rats that nearly reached shore.

And the two red cats, Abyssians, that did —

the lone survivors —

poised on a crate of Sumatran cloves.

Their feral descendants still prowl the underbrush,

fur clove-scented,

eyes ocean-blue.