Bard Billot on the boy king
Chipwrecked
Chipkins woke to another lonely day marooned
On the golden sands of Prime Minister Atoll.
It had been months since the good ship HMS Kindness
Had foundered on the reefs of ill fortune.
The rest of his crew had made off
In the one remaining life raft.
His only companions were a palm tree
And a lone seagull called Seymour.
Chipkins went for his morning constitutional,
Walking twenty steps in a circle around his atoll
Which was getting smaller by the day.
“I could swear the water is rising,” he told the palm tree.
“It is,” replied the palm tree. “The polls are melting.”
Chipkins stared at the wavelets which slopped
Around his ankles.
Beyond the reef he could see fins
Lazily moving in slow circles.
“There is only one escape,” said Chipkins.
“I will tunnel my way out.”
He thought he heard the seagull laugh
And glared at it.
Chipkins started digging.
Down into the sand he dug beneath the sea.
Deeper and deeper into the earth’s crust.
His amazing tunnel grew and grew
And he lost track of time
He grew dizzy through thirst and fatigue.
Somewhere near the centre of the Earth
Where the laws of physics are warped and strange,
He emerged into a great dim cavern.
There was Captain Luxon of the Bermuda Triangle
Sitting on a rock looking lost.
Then Chipkins passed by Lord Winston of the Admiralty
Who winked at him and said “See you soon.”
Chipkins did not falter at these hallucinations
But tunnelled on towards land day in, day out.
“According to my calculations,
I’d say I’ve made it to the North Shore,”
He said to himself one day with a sense of great relief.
A last push and he emerged into the bright sunlight
And clambered out of his sandy hole.
The small beach looked strangely familiar.
Chipkins looked up at a single palm tree.
The salty water lapped around his ankles:
All around him the endless blue extended
To the distant horizon,
Broken only by lazily cruising fins.
Above him in the palm tree,
He could hear a seagull laughing. Victor Billot has previously felt moved to write Odes for such luminaries as Christopher Luxon, Tory Whanau, Michael Wood, and Wayne Brown.
