When Fall has flung the dead leaves to the lawn,
And Night has pulped them in cold rain till dawn,
While every plant that pleased the world is dead,
Each casually murdered in its bed;
When cold winds rake the rubbish heaps and send
Wet notices no one you know has penned—
Soiled scraps, blurred ink, the kind of thing
That some sepulchral summoner might bring;
When blackbirds struggle with the grieving sky,
To croak their witness that the world’s awry, 
“Our life is pathless, we can only stray.”
Small wonder people try to get away.
Some couples may take out a second trust 
To satisfy their edgy wanderlust, 
Then folk of many different types and styles
Develop fervent longing for the Virgin Isles
And use whatever means they can secure
To see St. Thomas on a package tour.
These pilgrims of the modern sort would trek 
Downtown themselves to book a penthouse deck
Where they alone would toast the isle’s allure
Splashed in full color through the cruise brochure,
Gloating, as if they owned it privately,
Along with nearby portions of the sea.
Divorced, and short on funds, nevertheless
I thought a modest trip might ease distress.
Perhaps I might meet someone dressed in silk
Under the moonlight. Something of that ilk.

Each week, The Colorado Sun and Colorado Humanities & Center For The Book feature an excerpt from a Colorado book and an interview with the author. Explore the SunLit archives at coloradosun.com/sunlit.

I passed by cruises billed as “European”
And cheap-cheap tours on ships flagged Eritrean
(Having had dreams in which I walked the plank
For cutthroats, who all sniggered as I sank).
The travel agent whom I found by phone 
Cut short my long, apologetic drone
And launched into his own, well-practiced spiel:
“I’ve got the perfect package—it’s a deal!
“We’ve come up with bereavement fares this Spring.
For those whose other halves have taken wing.
“You qualify if you have lost your spouse!”
(Well, so I had, and with her half my house.)
I found that I’d agreed to sail with twenty-nine
Whose marital status was not far from mine.
We were a “Survivors’ Club,” a mere device
To give us access to a discount price.
(I ask if “survivor” required Her to be dead:
The agent laughed. “At least to you!” he said.)
But then he said, should someone snoop,
I’d blend in well among the mourning group—
We’d all share staterooms. I could don a mien
Consistent with my loss. If I came clean,
He said, I would not have to “disembark”
Mid-ocean to be hors d’oeuvres for some shark.
It seemed that there was not another way
To get a discount, so I said, “OK.”

Our ship, the Ocean Froth, oppressed the quay,
And dazzled like an iceberg on the sea, 
A floating torte of countless frosted decks.
Scanning them from below wreaked hell with necks;
You needed binoculars to find the top
And maybe an astrolabe or turboprop.
Within her labyrinthine layers she’d hold
Up to five thousand passengers, all told,
So closely packed that one precocious sneeze
Could gain the status of widespread disease;
In just a day, and with an extra night,
An international disaster site.
Our berths were up on Deck H-115,
The steward told me. I had never seen
A ship so vast that every fire drill
Required some wilderness survival skill,
Knowledge of maps and compasses at least
And how at night to tell the west from east.
Each deck was subdivided into planes
With quadrants, sections, subsections, and lanes, 
And elevator banks and corridors 
Both fore and aft, unfolding by the scores.
At length by hide-and-seek I found
The berth where I felt destined to be drowned.
I kicked the shoes from my beleaguered feet,
Which airport concourses and lines had beat,
And started to undress and wash my face,
Hunched in the tiny lavatory space, 
When, in my roommate came, and not just him,
But many others, squeezing limb by limb
Into the cabin, which had been assigned
In error by the computer mastermind 
To the entire group “Survivors’ Club.”
Converging like the spokes around a hub,
And buzzing like a hive of angry bees,
We waited for the purser and the keys,
For thirty minutes. Trying not to stare
At my new polka-dotted underwear,
We stood around and giggled until we
Decided we might be good company.

“Journey to St. Thomas”

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We made for St. Thomas late that afternoon,
Under a red and inauspicious moon.
At seven, when the evening meal was served,
We found a lengthy table was reserved
Down in a room outfitted with a bar
And filled with chattering guests from near and far. 
Our table sign had lilies etched in black:
Betokening our loss. No turning back.
There was no menu, though, for every meal
Served all alike, part of the package deal.
Drinks were not included, but the ship
Supplied some table wine to start the trip
In penance for the mix-up in our rooms.
It was a bit like grog, with fire and fumes;
Those who needed more to aid their slumbers
Found that the bar would bill by cabin numbers. 
Beside a window looking over seas
Grown gray with dusk, as with some grave disease
We sat at last assembled as a group,
Awaiting the first course, chilled melon soup.
To pass the time I’ll share my own reviews
Of these, my new companions on the cruise—
Both who they were, and whom they meant to be,
Foibles and fancies as revealed to me,
And why they thought this venture would be fun;
Let’s start with one whose working life was done.

There was a General, a forthright man.
His greatest pleasure was to map and plan.
For thirty years he’d served in foreign wars
And fought in mortal battles by the scores.
Shipped out of “Rot-C,” wet behind the ears,
Into the Tet Offensive with his peers, 
He climbed their bodies strewn about at Hue 
But never wept and never ran away.
When he was wounded fighting near Khe Sanh, 
Leading his squad with every bullet gone
He called in air support, the prospects dire,
And lost six months to wounds from friendly fire.
From infantry battalions in Kuwait
He led reconnaissance to calibrate
Iraqi strength and safeguard the Brigade.
And in Afghanistan his daring raid
Against the Taliban’s secluded caves,
Sent numerous assassins to their graves.
For this, our grateful state, though slow to thank,
At last retired him with a step in rank
From colonel all the way to brigadier
With medals at which neophytes might peer
If he should wear them, which he never did.
He kept them in a locker where he hid
Old deeds, diplomas, tokens of esteem
He never looked at, for he did not dream
Of personal accomplishments or fame.
He’d seen his peers shirk combat just to claim
Prestigious posts in Washington, D.C.,
The lifelines of a desk-man’s pedigree.

But he disdained such bureaucratic strife 
For all he had to offer was his life.
He knew about a battle’s deadly cost;
His face was marked with every man he’d lost.
And yet, despite his known ferocity,
He showed  not a bit of animosity
When those at dinner would hold forth on war
And strategies that they lacked talent for.
He thought the greatest tragedy was death,
The foremost that of his life partner, Beth,
For whom he had arranged this trip at sea
To celebrate their pending liberty.
He’d stood down Fate, only to bury her—
No battle plan existed to deter
The march of aching illness through her bones.
She was a song now, rife with overtones,
That made him reach for her each night, but clutch
Cold pillows, so devoid of needed touch.
Without her, it was clear that his attire
Would never win a battle with the dryer;
You could not guess his value from his dress:
His navy blazer had been worn to shininess,
Its middle button hung from a frayed thread—
The top and bottom did the work instead.

His daughter, Julia, sat just next to him,
A Captain, sharp of mind and strong of limb,
Her hair bobbed dark beneath a duckbilled cap.
Near forty, she was energy on tap,
And quite a lovely woman: tight of frame,
With eyes that put a sunny lake to shame.
And yet, as is the case with such a lake,
Below a certain depth she went opaque;
For she commanded cyber-operations,
Sniffing the coded trails of foreign nations.
And she was as accomplished in the field:
There were no weapons that she could not wield,
Or tests of stamina she would not try.
She shot as well as any macho guy
But when off duty, as I’ve heard the tale,
No one would ever take her for a male.
She did not see herself as someone’s wife:
There was too much she wanted from her life,
So if some hero thought he’d bring her down,
And did not heed the warning in her frown,
He soon would find his body on the floor,
For she was skilled in all the arts of war.
Yet, Julia, not Amazon nor Artemis,
Would give a worthy man the kind of kiss
That left him weak-kneed, craving just one more.
So sometimes, if he was not from the corps,
And was as courteous as fit and fair,
He might stand awed as she let down her hair
And sweetly made his fondest hopes fulfilled.
Rumors that trickled back to base were killed.
Her private life she kept strictly unknown,
Both for her father’s sake and for her own,
And laughed off disappointed gibes that she
Belonged in some Sapphic sorority.
The General stood apart and let her run,
As proud as he would be of any son; 
And yet he grieved that chiefs of staff unseen,
Would one day find a chance to intervene
And elevate some less accomplished man
In keeping with their buddy-system’s plan.
For now, he smiled; she gave his cheek a peck
And went to run ten laps around the deck.

He brought his aide-de-camp, who’d followed him
Into retirement judging that the glim
Was off the service once his boss was gone.
He shaved his head, which left his features drawn,
Making it seem he was a single scowl,
One unified expression, pate to jowl.
His ways, plain-spoken, kept him in the field
For he was quick to challenge, slow to yield
If any higher order made no sense.
Or, for some reason, seniors took offense
And sent him into combat, sure that he
Would first exasperate the enemy
Before he killed them, or himself was killed
And either happenstance would leave them thrilled. 
The General found him stalwart and astute:
He liked the fact the man would not salute
And jump to orders that he knew were wrong.
Their bond was loyal, and it was lifelong.
No one knew better how to get supplied
Outside of channels when those channels died.
No one had better sense when he was faced
With quandaries that might leave them all disgraced;
For, such decisions were quite foreign to
That medal-decked, but acquiescent crew
Who hold the Pentagon’s dark canyons from
Rank interlopers who one day might come
To dominate those corridors and toss
The aging bureaucrats into a fosse.
Now, knowing that his dear friend had no chance 
Without him to stay safe or to advance,
The General had brought him on this cruise, 
To find the time and place to disabuse
His pal of thoughts civilian life would bless
Him with high wages and a choice of dress! 
He knew the wind blows cold down alleys where
Some broken veterans slump in despair. 

Josiah Hatch arrived in Denver from Georgia in 1993. A Princeton graduate who studied Anglo-Saxon and Middle English at Oxford, his most recent publication is “Journey to St. Thomas: Tales for our Time.” In addition to his legal practice, he teaches courses in international business and economics at the Josef Korbel School for International Studies at the University of Denver. 

Type of Story: Review

An assessment or critique of a service, product, or creative endeavor such as art, literature or a performance.