for Bartholomew Roberts

When the chokehold of sulfur and saltpetre

released your men, they found your body cannon-

cradled, dead eyes watching the waiting swell

below. Moments before you stood, jewelled

and sober, every inch a captain; your voice

cut short by scattered shot, commanding sailors

whose rum-lust ways steered you into ruin.

But in their sweet confusion, in the wake

of their survival, they remembered your wis

to be joined with the sea that birthed you:

the peace you made with death, the truce struck

by hourglass, shaking hands with your final

moments when you became a pirate. They will

not sail your body back to England to hang

in chains – your afterlife a heaven of foam

and tides, home in the currents of the Atlantic.