despite having lived on a ship where sailors with lively language offered the lexicon of their erudition freely with crackers aplenty. Grateful for salt she remained silent in thanks, kept her claws sharp and her beak at the ready, one eye open for those who might tire of hardtack or the ocean’s daily offering of flying fish. Better that than squid. Her heartbeat mirrored the waves patterning against many ships’ hulls. She chose to forget the many names of the many Captains who’d asked her guidance during countless storms. Her eye-blinks were never understood for the truth they spoke. Having lost her sea legs, unable to clutch and hold on even in modest wakes and waves, she was retired to land. Polly was not polycentric and had never been accused of being polytonal. But not a man had ever guessed her true name, a sadness, since having done so would’ve freed her tongue to sing the sun, to twang the moon. Now, a landlubber, a ground waddler with wings, she tours the bars which would-be pirates haunt, singing their songs and arggin their args. Come one day, she may have her say. She might corner the parish priest, and dump 100 years of damning thoughts atop his blackened shoulders.