many thanks to London Grip for publishing. So that’s 41 poems published out of 102.
DAY 41: APOLOGIES, WE LOST THURSDAY
I went to bed clutching Wednesday
and woke to Friday’s blank stare.
My watch still ticks Thursday,
loyal and confused,
while the ship’s newsletter
has moved on without me.
At breakfast, I ask the waiter
what happened to yesterday.
He shrugs, refills my coffee,
like losing a day is as normal
as losing an umbrella.
“It’s waiting for your return trip,”
the officer grins.
As if time were a checked bag
held at customs,
waiting for me to flash a pink slip.
I check my phone for proof
of the vanished hours:
no calls, no messages,
no evidence I existed
between sleep and waking.
The newsletter slides under my door,
announcing the day I missed
and a surprise appearance by Elton John
wearing his sequinned jacket.
The world simply reorganised itself
while I wasn’t looking.
This is how my life is lost
one missed line on the map at a time.
DAY 87: THE ONE-EYED SEAL WILL JUDGE YOU
(Walvis Bay, Namibia)
Sammy and Mandela steer our floating lounge
into the grey mouth of Pelican Point,
where fifty thousand seals preside like judges
in a courthouse made of rot.
Even half a mile out, the air curdles:
kerosene towels, fermented gut,
the sea’s rancid exhale
seeping into our clothes.
On shore, a lone hyena paces,
all hunger and hipbone,
searching for what can’t crawl fast enough.
Flamingos wade through chemical puddles,
pink cassocks flicking blessings
on pools that bloom in filth.
A preview of what survival looks like
when no one’s watching.
A pelican lands on deck,
its beak a rusted ladle of bones.
It struts through the cocktail fumes,
dragging a net of slippery miracles.
Then the one-eyed seal surfaces,
propeller scars stitched down its spine,
a cursive script of human failure
etched into its slick skin.
It can’t hunt anymore.
Mandela tosses it hake and salmon:
our guilt, whole and in a bucket.
I sip champagne. The bubbles rise
like the lost cries of something we forgot to save. +
We click photos, perform communion.
Guilt smiles with mirrored sunglasses,
wipes its mouth, says it’s doing the best it can.
Rodney Wood 