My mind went on composing its account at night,
I could hear it tracing glyphs on the hard substance

abundant in these waters
just off the aft deck to the tune of a gang of mosquitoes.

I could hear its running indifference to the indifference
of its medium,

and I couldn’t help it,
I mean there was literally nothing I could do

to help, only listen to its business of joining words
with the tip of its thought on the ongoing granite.

*

Scarcely one in a hundred of these islands is capable of cultivation,
wrote a sincere and self-
divided advocate
for the First Nations
circa 1850, Peter Jones his very
white name, therefore in their present rude and wild magnificence
they must remain, till all nature
be put to confusion, and the elements melt away with fervent heat.

Precisely what might then become of them
he hardly needed to explain.
Perhaps a single undulating island
without, perhaps, the need of a name.