When Joseph, the cook fell, overboard from the cargo ship,
he was drunk and everybody assumed that he drowned.
Not so! Joseph swam and swam
in waters known to have a fearsome shark or two lurking about.
In the morning he saw a tiny, palm decorated island
preening itself in the glass still sea
and knew that he had survived.
Wading ashore he was watched by the island’s only inhabitant,
who had come to sulk there after an acrimonious divorce.
Then disaster struck,
Joseph was hit by a block of frozen shit discharged off
a charter plane full of happy holiday makers,
singing on their way to Cuba.
The sulker, relieved that he wasn’t hit,
buried Joseph and made a cross out of driftwood,
on the cross he carved:
Here Rests An Unlucky Hero.
The divorced man, cured of his rancour,
sailed back to Jamaica, became a preacher,
but not a fanatical one,
it was in a bar I met him
when telling me the story
and I think it is important for the world to know
that Joseph didn’t dismally drown.