| The gray wastes of water surround | |
| My puny little shoal. Sometimes storms roll | |
| Tremendous billows far up on the gray sand beach, and the morning | |
| After, odd tusked monsters lie stinking in the sun. | |
| They are inedible. For food there is only | |
| Breadfruit, and berries garnered in the jungle's inner reaches, | |
| Wrested from scorpion and poisonous snake. Fresh water is a problem. | |
| After a rain you may find some nestling in the hollow trunk of a tree, or in hollow stones. | |
| One's only form of distraction is really | |
| To climb to the top of the one tall cliff to scan the distances. | |
| Not for a ship,of course--this island is far from all the trade routes-- | |
| But in hopes of an unusual sight, such as a school of dolphins at play, | |
| A whale spouting, or a cormorant bearing down on its prey. | |
| So high this cliff is that the pebble beach far below seems made of gravel. | |
| Halfway down, the crows and choughs look like bees. | |
| Near by are the nests of the vultures. They cluck sympathetically in my direction, | |
| Which will not prevent them from rending me limb from limb once I have kicked the bucket. | |
| Further down, and way over to one side, are eagles; | |
| Always fussing, fouling their big nests, they always seem to manage to turn their backs to you. | |
| The glass is low; no doubt we are in for a storm. | |
| Sure enough: in the pale gray and orange distances to the left, a | |
| Waterspout is becoming distinctly visible. Beautiful, but terrifying; | |
| Delicate, transparent, like a watercolor by that 19th-century Englishman whose name I forget | |
| (I am beginning to forget everything on this island. If only I had been allowed to bring my ten favorite books with me. -- |  |
| But a weathered child's alphabet is my only reading material. Luckily, | |
| Some of the birds and animals on the island are pictured in it--the albatross, for instance--that's a name I never would have remembered.) | |
| It looks as though the storm-fiend were planning to kick up quite a ruckus | |
| For this evening. I had better be getting back to the tent | |
| To make sure everything is shipshape, weight down the canvas with extra stones, | |
| Bank the fire, and prepare myself a little hard-tack and tea | |
| For the evening's repast. Still, it is rather beautiful up here, | |
| Watching the oncoming storm. Now the big cloud that was in front of the waterspout | |
| Seems to be lurching forward, so that the waterspout, behind it, looks more like a three-dimensional photograph. | |
| above me, the sky is a luminous silver-gray. Yet rain, like silver porcupine quills, has begun to be thrown down. | |
| Most of the rain is still contained in the big black cloud however.XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX | |
| All the lightning is still contained in the big black cloud however. Now thunder claps belch forth from it, | |
| Causing the startled vultures to fly forth from their nests. | |
| I really had better be getting back down, I suppose. | |
