Under an oppressive sky

two men shaving in an open boat

after a four-thousand mile marathon

soaked, their limbs swollen, unable to lie down

excepting a brief landfall at New Holland,

death’s sour breath blowing them ever westabout.

John Fryer, Bligh’s antagonist

on both voyages, the Bounty fiasco

& the miracle in this very boat,

fingers hollowed cheeks in the clammy heat,

task completed, offers to remove

the thick beard of Bligh’s servant, John Smith.
These exhausted sailors sit off Coupang, Timor,

left behind to guard Bligh’s possessions

after he raised a pennant of distress

then waited, high on duty, with his men,

constipated, dehydrated, tormented,

for formal permission to land.
Now he & sixteen others sip breakfast tea,

guests of surprised Englishmen

sojourning in the Spice Islands.

The two Johns use seawater aftershave

as a whiff of swamp reaches them,

&, shocked by the black sadness that overwhelms him,

Fryer wonders when their turn will come.