Castaway   The wind — that’s what I remember. That night it howled, it shrieked, it shredded all the sails, ripped through the rigging, screeched as the pumps failed and the timbers groaned, cracked. By lantern light we saw the water rising from the hold, pitching to port, to starboard, rising, black, boiling with rats, writhing. At last the rack and screw of the storm prevailed, the ship rolled all the way over, fell silent, then burst in a hell of water and darkness, screams swallowed by waves like falling mountains, teeming broken things, dead men, wreckage. At first I thought I must be dead, too, so no more thrashing seas, no more gasping on this shore.     © Michael Fleming Brattleboro, Vermont February 2010