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Kamikaze

The document tells the story of a man who embarked on a one-way journey by boat into history, leaving his family behind. It describes his family waiting for his return and how even after he came back, his wife and neighbors treated him as if he no longer existed.

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adamlindsay1907
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16 views2 pages

Kamikaze

The document tells the story of a man who embarked on a one-way journey by boat into history, leaving his family behind. It describes his family waiting for his return and how even after he came back, his wife and neighbors treated him as if he no longer existed.

Uploaded by

adamlindsay1907
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Her father embarked at sunrise

with a flask of water, a samurai sword


in the cockpit, a shaven head
full of powerful incantations
and enough fuel for a one-way
journey into history

but half way there, she thought,


recounting it later to her children,
he must have looked far down
at the little fishing boats
strung out like bunting
on a green-blue translucent sea

and beneath them, arcing in swathes


like a huge flag waved first one way
then the other in a figure of eight,
the dark shoals of fishes
flashing silver as their bellies
swivelled towards the sun

and remembered how he


and his brothers waiting on the shore
built cairns of pearl-grey pebbles
to see whose withstood longest
the turbulent inrush of breakers
bringing their father’s boat safe
– yes, grandfather’s boat – safe
to the shore, salt-sodden, awash
with cloud-marked mackerel,
black crabs, feathery prawns,
the loose silver of whitebait and once
a tuna, the dark prince, muscular, dangerous.

And though he came back


my mother never spoke again
in his presence, nor did she meet his eyes
and the neighbours too, they treated him
as though he no longer existed,
only we children still chattered and laughed

till gradually we too learned


to be silent, to live as though
he had never returned, that this
was no longer the father we loved.
And sometimes, she said, he must have wondered
which had been the better way to die.

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