Mauryad

The Zero
swiveled
from the sun
and sprayed
lead
from Pittsburgh
into the round
fuselage
of the Grauman
Hellcat.
Maury
from Tucson
jumped
through the flames
into a darkening sky
black with oily smoke.
His silk chute
snapped
and he jerked,
his jumpboots
dancing
above wisps
of jellied clouds.
His Hellcat
crashed into the sea.
A caesura
before
it cracked the surf
like the claw
of a Baltimore crab.
Maury caught
a silver glint
off a steel strut
as the Zero
turned.
He was alive,
but now a castaway.

The green sea
teemed
with dolphins,
leaping
in the surging
surf
off a pink,
coral atoll.
Beneath,
hammerheads
circled
the sinking Hellcat
and flying fish
spit
upwards
in mirrored
pirouettes,
mocking
the steel
weight
that the sea
transformed
into rust.
Maury invested
his rubber vest
with air
and floated
on his back.
Next stop,
he whispered,
is hell.

No land.
Only an atoll
of pink coral
to rest his head.
Maury sensed
the sharks
and the leviathans
circling below.
One whale
eyed him
with such empathy
that Maury imagined
it wept
for his plight.
His head
grated
against pocked coral
and he grasped
with wrinkled fingers
the mottled
reef
and pulled
himself from the sea.
The moon
now a silver circle
centered
above the pacific
sea
shone
upon his berth
on the atoll.
Safe now,
he said,
"I am hungry."


The atoll stretched
like a withered finger
a kilometer
from east to west,
covered with a skein
of salvaged sand.
The only food
was sand fleas
and gulls' eggs.
Just beyond his reach
fish teemed.


Days passed
and then months.
Now naked
Maury danced
on his coral stage.
Once he found
a black spider
lodged
in a coral niche.
He named it god
and worshiped it.

Eventually,
Maury forgot
the language
of the surface.
He came
to speak
leviathan
and dolphin.
He could even converse
with his sworn enemy
the gulls.
Sometimes
he wore their feathers
to honor their sacrifice.
He rode the fins
of the porpoise
and mosaic shells
of sea turtles.
He grew gills
and slept in caves
deep within the rifts
that ran across the floor
of the sea.

Finally,
Maury walked
on his head,
his webbed feet
firmly against the waves.
He cursed
ships
that cut troughs
in his roof
and submarines
that penetrated
his solitude.
Sometimes,
he visited
the atoll
and coughed
when he breathed
the oily, acrid
air of the surface
and dreamed
of the topsy-turvy
world
of the Hellcat.