Boiler-suited, cap and tools wheeling like crows,
a pillow burst like flak, or black feathers
falling, clawing the air like Icarus.
The rigging gave, cracked like a nut. One slow
agonising moment and another –
the hull wrong way up like a steel cathedral.
Still we like to think he did not suffer.
But he held on for days in that hospital.
In Curaçao or Port Sudan, father felt the cargo
shifting in the hold. Surely an omen?
The women brought the body home, and began
the mourning – cursing the man
who felled the one thing in life you could cling to.
Who orphaned the postcards you’d send back home.