Peril, Thy Name is Plunderer!

after ROM: Spaceknight #13, December 1980

She remembers the way the flashlight
went out when he held it in the big

silver mitten of his hand, how he stroked
that silver mitten down Nipper's back

as he listened to her story of lost yachts
and pirates, patiently waiting with her

in the coolness of the cave where she'd
led him unable to explain why she hadn't

told ma and pa about the man in armour
she'd found on the rocks like in that book

from the school library about the iron man
washed up on shore but not in parts like

that one, all together this one was except he
didn't know his own name, a mystery like

Nancy Drew: The Case of the Forgetting
Sea-Wrack Robot, a secret just for her and

the dog to keep or solve, a bottle with no
message inside, another lost thing found

beachcombing like the piece of cheek-
smooth sea glass and the albatross feathers

all unzipped and the bright brittle cuttlefish
and that belly-up pufferfish she'd been too

scared to pick up and throw into the foam,
always broken things and small and dead,

never something this big or alive or complete,
never something so strange or full of promise.