He sat on the beach of his private island,
wrote messages on scraps of paper
once were staring blankly back at him,
folded them up, pushed them through bottles’ narrow necks
into bottles’ ample bodies,
where they, shaken, shifted.
He flung them as far as he could into the ocean’s waves,
like a parent gazed after them,
until he lost them in the spray
or the tangle of waves like a twisting-turning cotton-thread,
waited long enough for them not to return.
After a few days, each day
he would scour the undulating sand shaped by the receding sea,
tread its soft moistness for something untoward,
an object or colour which would catch his eye.
Slowly, he gave up, seeing no sign of change,
fell into the routine of never expecting anything,
scuffed the cloying sand at his feet,
saw enough beauty in that, and the foam surging by his side,
licking at him, and then seeping away.
Eventually, he felt the urge to write messages on paper again,
scribbled down on his scraps what it felt like
to have sent out messages on the endless seas,
and, stranded on his isle, received nothing back.
Drawing in draughts of fresh sea-air,
sitting on the sand, the sea’s wide sweep before him,
he glanced around for bottles he could stuff
with the paper he made his dreams of.
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