Carried Away By Pirates
By Ryan Stovall
A pistol rests on my easy chair, gray,
three-quarters of an inch, made of plastic,
butt built to fit a yellow, c-shaped grip—
this winter we’ve been playing Legos
and learning pirates.
Swords and boarding pikes
dot the fringed waters of our living room rug
alongside catapults or canons,
whichever weapons best fire
today’s twin six-year-old imaginations
(historical accuracy a distant second standard).
While we built block towers and towns
to be bombarded, I talked up romance
to keep my kiddos interested, the excitement,
exploration and conquest, flying fish
and moonlit coves and phosphorescence,
the Bey, his desert city, shining blocks of Maine snow
scattered haphazardly on brown, steep-ascending shores,
drumbeats emanating from tropic jungles,
the gentle vagaries of sun and wind and tide.
The hook set, I unwittingly let Romance walk the plank,
and began to sing my precious pirates truer lullabies
about wind-piled water hurling vessels onto reef and rock,
the capricious freezing tide that sucks a little pirate down,
the sun that burns and blacks and cracks the tongue with thirst,
trust done to death, poison arrows, betrayal and deceit,
and fly-blown donkey carcasses
and human-shit cupcakes, dotting the tortuous dusty streets
of shining-lie cities, the stench of which
blow out and reach across the flat blue bay.
I sang Somalia and a father’s starving-children desperation,
hostages and rusty boats and AK 47s,
or ancient galleys, crammed with chains and oars
and soars and uncut hair, men dehumanized,
ground to pulp, then discarded,
pus-filled suppurating wounds
and amputations cauterized,
the always unfulfilled and unfulfilling lust for gold.
There’s a pistol on my easy chair, and I realize
that this winter my six year olds heard a bit too much.
****
Ryan Stovall is a former adventurer, world traveler, and Green Beret. His first poetry book, Black Snowflakes Smothering a Torch, is due out in November from Woodhall Press. Ryan lives and writes in the mountains of western Maine.