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- Story Listed as: True Life For Adults
- Theme: Action & Adventure
- Subject: Adventure
- Published: 09/10/2013
ISLAND OF THE CONCHS
Born 1950, M, from Baltimore, Maryland, United StatesISLAND OF THE CONCHS
I sat on the hood
of my four cylinder Toyota
eating coconut meat
on what passed for
the last wild island
in the Florida Keys.
After a furious pounding
my wife had broken the husk,
sipped the milk and shared with me
the sweet white chunks,
but now she was collecting shells
with pretty designs
bending and reaching
into the opulent waters.
Our future was
as far and as near
as cloudy and clear
as the static squaw line
hanging like god's gray laundry
on the troubled southern horizon
where water spouts dipped and swizzled
and seemed as harmless and wistful
as feather kite tails
when my wife showed off
the bounty she would keep and dry.
I reminded her to check
and dig out from them
anything alive or the stink
would drive us right out of our car.
A few bathers dotted the shoreline
and stood more in the sun than the sea
knee deep and squinting looking for dolphins
that would often swing by in groups.
One leggy lady scattered those dots
when she scrambled out splashing and yelling
about a Barracuda out near the edge of the grass.
I tossed the husk and grabbed my mask,
strode into the tepid straits and fell backwards
hopping like a drunken frog trying to stretch
the rubber fins over my feet, while the island girl,
that is my wife, laughed and dropped her nuts.
To avoid cutting and scraping my skin
I swam out in thigh deep water before
the fathomless ocean suspended me
between the silvery and the gloom
as billowing clouds kept beating back the light.
Sand swirled unsettled by the vestige
of an earlier shower still skipping rope
with and around the fickle bastard sun,
a patch of glow here then there
mere spots disappearing and reappearing
skinny beams drawing straws on what were mostly shadows.
I couldn't see a thing and my mask leaked.
The seeping salt water stung my eyes
and belabored my breathing, fogging the lens.
I surfaced in water well over my head.
In the turbulence and distance
I could no longer make out the island
but I knew its location by the magic carpet cloud
which stubbornly hovered over the flat mangrove sliver.
The swells were bigger and the current stronger
and the visibility improved to perhaps ten feet.
A rainbow had surrendered and retreated
vanishing as it became a foreboding crystal cave.
Fluttering schools of fish lurked and clustered
delicately dancing in decaying coral gardens
as I drifted like a noodle in a big bowl of a shark tail soup.
I lacked the balls to really get lost at sea
instead I was a fetal leaf floating
in an infinite womb that left and kept me cold.
But maybe that was what I wanted,
perhaps deep inside I was comfortable not knowing
what I might discover where I've never been
to a place I didn't know.
It was nothing compared to the decade past
when a tattooed pirate guided Seth and me
to this island as the only spot
without the need to ride a boat way out.
And yet he warned us to steer clear
from where the channels flushed
the bay between the ocean and the gulf
and avoid a furious ride to Havana town.
Still Seth and I chased a wayward shark
so far out we lost track of a mole sized islet
supporting a stunted banana plant
in company with a single stooped palm
decorated with little lizards feeding
on Palmetto bugs burrowed underground.
We were reluctant to risk our fingers
molesting the spiny lobsters
antennae swaying like willow stalks
hiding beneath a pocket ledge
where we were spooked
by a centipede the length of a baseball bat
its crawling legs dimpling the sugar sand.
We couldn't keep up with a flying stingray
flapping eagle aqua wings after we
startled it out of its camouflage repose.
Sea urchins anchored every crevice
bordering wispy forests of staghorns, fans, and brains
and as the ocean turned choppy
and the bottom vanished to a nothing void
the shark glided beyond out ability to follow.
Seth dove deeper than my ears could bear.
So for a while I lost him till he stroked
from behind and below me,
his lungs must have been ready to burst.
I saw his neck, his back, and then his khaki cutoffs
which were split wide open from his belt
past his ass through his crotch.
He had no idea about his exposure
and I laughed so hard I sucked in water
and choked as my belly shook and ached,
I needed a few minutes to recover treading water.
I didn't tell him anything was amiss.
I raced ahead of him to the only
publicly available open air shower.
Seth followed unaware of his revealing indecency.
While he waited for me to finish
two middle aged ladies gawked in horror and shock
as I pretended to be surprised and exclaimed so all could hear
"Seth! My god! you're showing everything you got!"
He looked down and just smiled as he lifted his fins
and held one in front and the other to his butt
too wet and encumbered to light the camel between his lips.
Next to him was a sack of pink Conchs
we had picked from the sea bed.
Back then they were as plentiful
as the foot puncturing ubiquitous urchins
and the coral was abundant and king
in healthy hues of purple and orange
sheltering hordes of innocent fish.
Since then the decades of development
and dredging and sewage and
the runoff of twice as many people
spoiled an experience beyond anything
you could ever even dream.
by L DOUGLAS ST OURS
July 2010
ISLAND OF THE CONCHS(L DOUGLAS ST OURS)
ISLAND OF THE CONCHS
I sat on the hood
of my four cylinder Toyota
eating coconut meat
on what passed for
the last wild island
in the Florida Keys.
After a furious pounding
my wife had broken the husk,
sipped the milk and shared with me
the sweet white chunks,
but now she was collecting shells
with pretty designs
bending and reaching
into the opulent waters.
Our future was
as far and as near
as cloudy and clear
as the static squaw line
hanging like god's gray laundry
on the troubled southern horizon
where water spouts dipped and swizzled
and seemed as harmless and wistful
as feather kite tails
when my wife showed off
the bounty she would keep and dry.
I reminded her to check
and dig out from them
anything alive or the stink
would drive us right out of our car.
A few bathers dotted the shoreline
and stood more in the sun than the sea
knee deep and squinting looking for dolphins
that would often swing by in groups.
One leggy lady scattered those dots
when she scrambled out splashing and yelling
about a Barracuda out near the edge of the grass.
I tossed the husk and grabbed my mask,
strode into the tepid straits and fell backwards
hopping like a drunken frog trying to stretch
the rubber fins over my feet, while the island girl,
that is my wife, laughed and dropped her nuts.
To avoid cutting and scraping my skin
I swam out in thigh deep water before
the fathomless ocean suspended me
between the silvery and the gloom
as billowing clouds kept beating back the light.
Sand swirled unsettled by the vestige
of an earlier shower still skipping rope
with and around the fickle bastard sun,
a patch of glow here then there
mere spots disappearing and reappearing
skinny beams drawing straws on what were mostly shadows.
I couldn't see a thing and my mask leaked.
The seeping salt water stung my eyes
and belabored my breathing, fogging the lens.
I surfaced in water well over my head.
In the turbulence and distance
I could no longer make out the island
but I knew its location by the magic carpet cloud
which stubbornly hovered over the flat mangrove sliver.
The swells were bigger and the current stronger
and the visibility improved to perhaps ten feet.
A rainbow had surrendered and retreated
vanishing as it became a foreboding crystal cave.
Fluttering schools of fish lurked and clustered
delicately dancing in decaying coral gardens
as I drifted like a noodle in a big bowl of a shark tail soup.
I lacked the balls to really get lost at sea
instead I was a fetal leaf floating
in an infinite womb that left and kept me cold.
But maybe that was what I wanted,
perhaps deep inside I was comfortable not knowing
what I might discover where I've never been
to a place I didn't know.
It was nothing compared to the decade past
when a tattooed pirate guided Seth and me
to this island as the only spot
without the need to ride a boat way out.
And yet he warned us to steer clear
from where the channels flushed
the bay between the ocean and the gulf
and avoid a furious ride to Havana town.
Still Seth and I chased a wayward shark
so far out we lost track of a mole sized islet
supporting a stunted banana plant
in company with a single stooped palm
decorated with little lizards feeding
on Palmetto bugs burrowed underground.
We were reluctant to risk our fingers
molesting the spiny lobsters
antennae swaying like willow stalks
hiding beneath a pocket ledge
where we were spooked
by a centipede the length of a baseball bat
its crawling legs dimpling the sugar sand.
We couldn't keep up with a flying stingray
flapping eagle aqua wings after we
startled it out of its camouflage repose.
Sea urchins anchored every crevice
bordering wispy forests of staghorns, fans, and brains
and as the ocean turned choppy
and the bottom vanished to a nothing void
the shark glided beyond out ability to follow.
Seth dove deeper than my ears could bear.
So for a while I lost him till he stroked
from behind and below me,
his lungs must have been ready to burst.
I saw his neck, his back, and then his khaki cutoffs
which were split wide open from his belt
past his ass through his crotch.
He had no idea about his exposure
and I laughed so hard I sucked in water
and choked as my belly shook and ached,
I needed a few minutes to recover treading water.
I didn't tell him anything was amiss.
I raced ahead of him to the only
publicly available open air shower.
Seth followed unaware of his revealing indecency.
While he waited for me to finish
two middle aged ladies gawked in horror and shock
as I pretended to be surprised and exclaimed so all could hear
"Seth! My god! you're showing everything you got!"
He looked down and just smiled as he lifted his fins
and held one in front and the other to his butt
too wet and encumbered to light the camel between his lips.
Next to him was a sack of pink Conchs
we had picked from the sea bed.
Back then they were as plentiful
as the foot puncturing ubiquitous urchins
and the coral was abundant and king
in healthy hues of purple and orange
sheltering hordes of innocent fish.
Since then the decades of development
and dredging and sewage and
the runoff of twice as many people
spoiled an experience beyond anything
you could ever even dream.
by L DOUGLAS ST OURS
July 2010
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