Valentine 2

(Captain Cook dies in Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii) - After which, we know, the Resolution loosed her carriage guns and muskets on the offending bush; and perhaps, even then, the crew noted the way the fan palms, the lush vine-weave, the acanthaceae bellied like sails, became momentarily more and more-radiant than themselves as they took shells, how their crushed-wet smell reached the ship even before the heat and noise of impact, and were ashamed to let it stop their work, for Cook was dead. And perhaps Clerke turning over his dry bones in a tent pitched on a rock stretch of coast where death and a small girl watched, fretted, took turns pressing their dry hands to his forehead, perhaps he said – to death, the girl couldn’t understand – ‘In our absence they’d made us gods. Who’d traded no less than the ship’s iron nails for bits of skin-touch, native girls.’ And then, ‘Even when the foremastman died, yes, even when Cook himself belched at the feast.’ And then, ‘So absence does.’ Death, nodding in the corner, checked his watch, tented his fingertips, assumed what he assumed was the proper expression, perhaps. The girl touched him again, then hiked back to the camp with meat and tin, his knife – the usual things.