One March afternoon in 1969 I was on the deck of a Chinese junk listening to the water clop against the wooden hull and enjoying a breeze that blew toward the South China Sea. The junk bobbed
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There is a place by the ocean,
a burial site for flesh and steel
beasts
where mast meets cross
and mermaid bowsprit conspires
with moss-choked stone angel.
The insects falter in their
primordial dance,
missteps of appendages
and antennae.
They nibble on salt-corroded metal
and nestle in rot-sweet chest cavities.
And there, below the ground,
paying the baffled insects no mind,
the ship and human bones
waltz on.
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