Ben Boyd’s tower
The bay’s silk curtain is blue milk, draped from the opposite shore the sea pricked out in boats their white sails dancing upon its pleats through the spyglass he scanned the coves, the inlets, their crescent smiles and across to Eden a Stink, the whale bones lying about covered by feeding crows
Framed in a high window he might look like a wandering ghost his skin freckled, weathered his eyes pink-rimmed, lips dry, salt-glistered a struggle climbing up seabirds caterwauling round his head he grasped his broad-leafed hat lest the wind snatch it for the ocean and show his thinning pate
Toward the spindrift-blurred horizon, something in him yearning always had, since boyhood he’d built a port, a place with his rules and his own currency though all was against him − the weather! lack of labour, the laws! Not his fault his ventures have collapsed suddenly, he was bored
Sea eagles were circling an aeronaut, he might fly away but could only climb down a servant came forth with his carriage helped him up, awkwardly he glanced at himself in his mirror slicked down his balding crown he, who felt himself a personage was he still comme il faut?
Along the ship-wrecked coast hidden vessels drift beneath the waves octopuses’ gardens huddle in the weed-furred rotting hulls in deep green whale-strong swells he made for the Pacific Islands dragging his submerged selves plotting a republic, a land grab sailed to his secret death
The scorched tower still stands its headland now fire-razed, scalped of scrub tourists potter about pause before the signage − warped, melted and will it be replaced? the tower’s cordoned off − they ignore pose, in its emptiness watch the waves slam vermilion rock below treacherous cliffs
Wind mouths the lone tower tourists speculate − these sandstone blocks carried miles, from Sydney by bullock train, at enormous cost who was Benjamin Boyd? a colonial Christopher Skase? but more, a blackbirder wrought death, disease on his captured men indifferent to their fate
Matting the headland now green and juicy growth − wattle, myrtles spring out of charcoal ground fire has revealed the middens, the shells crumbling to ashy earth signs of those whose place it was, and is the romance is fading listen − other voices are speaking a new naming begins