Man in a Coffin

Tell me of your underworld

When you take me to Zanzibar

Speak truisms to a shadow

As I slip into the water

–

I’ll form a fleet with strangers

Taking colours in their race

Delivery by tropic mafia

Children at a child’s pace

–

The box of pine we carry

On a cliffside beach will open

Spilling seasalt sand from

A tall man’s heavy coffin

–

Uncovered and softly prodded

He’ll blink as if he only slept

Curls fit for a silver screen

And from film maybe he leapt

–

For he simply disappears

As we forget and paddle on

His revival a memory

So queer, it can’t stay long

© 2012 Elizabeth Cook