The Island And The Ship Poem by Erica Brett

Sometimes, I find myself standing in a crowd of strangers
and I am alone, on the coast of an undiscovered land,
looking over an exciting jungle,
all green and growing, writhing in a fertile tangle of vines and ferns,
pushing each other down for room, climbing each other to the light,
with tropical birds screeching and cawing, high above,
plumage awash in crimson sunsets and deep aqua lakes,
swooping down amidst the rustling foliage,
and hooting monkeys, far below, beating their hairy chests,
roaring their hierarchal societies into submission,
and snakes gliding silently over coarse branches within,
wrapped and lying patiently in wait O most patiently!
for such little creatures and critters of the forest to come scampering along,
unsuspecting and free,
waiting
waiting
waiting
Then Striking like Lightning! Trapping and Constricting!
Squeezing the life slowly from their helpless bodies.
Then finally, the frogs, croaking and chirping their earthly time away,
passing idle hours crouched upon old, rotting logs,
watching the world passively through unblinking eyes.

Such are the sounds and sights I absorb from my post,
high above and far away from that strange island
but so too am I high above and far away from that familiar deck below.
Calls and shouts and commands and grunts
and creaking timbers and gusts of wind in the billowing sails
all below, far below my lofty and lonely perch in the sky.
My kin and comrades and all the people I know,
working, toiling, laughing far below.

And I will join their ranks and games,
I will swap stories, swallow rum, recall the past and forget the future.
But not now, up in my far seeing solitude,
playing God to these creatures far away and below me.
Now yet in my swaying throne of timber
far above the world,
Alone amidst strangers and friends.