This is the road I chose
and chose well I think.
Just cockerels crowing
in the huts among the trees
no bikes or people bother me
No cries of 'Transport! Transport!'
Yes, it's quiet enough
but somehow I feel
it's made no 'difference'.
Mangroves stretch off to my right
To my left on a bank of mud
crabs have dug their holes.
A veritable warren!
Just like rabbits only smaller.
I imagine a crab sitting
at the entrance of its hole
It raises its claws above its head like ears.
Now who could tell the difference.
There's that word again, 'difference'.
The quiet and the greenery here
the butterflies and bird calls.
Is that not different enough?
I let a bulbul answer
'Not enough, not enough!'
Now to my right's the island rubbish dump
On another day I'd go in to look for snakes.
Where there's there's snakes.
Big snakes.
But today I'm not looking for excitement.
Just a quiet empty road through the mangroves
and 'difference'.
Now I'm passing by a gang of kids
hunting crabs with catapults.
Is that low growing bush some kind of samphire?
Could one eat it? I don't try.
As I walk I pass the time
with banalities like these.
The light catches a spark of blue.
A kingfisher?
No just a strip of plastic
blown by a sudden breeze.
Now what's this?
The Goat Café!
It seems deserted
Though it offers petrol, food and massage
Or so it says
on a dirty paint scrawled sign.
A sign more 'forlorn hope'
than advertisement.
Next, a shrine
the ground outside the walls
littered with little bamboo trays
that once held offerings
Then later on among the mangroves
The Cara Aji Guest House
Thatched huts behind a concrete wall
I pity the poor guests who wound up here
and pass on.
I am briefly pestered by a badly tattooed boy
riding what appears to be his little brother's bike.
He tells me that 'Mangrup' is really good.
Later I'm somewhat disappointed to realize
he probably said 'mangrove' but I just heard
the difference..
Difference again.
The Mangrove Resort.
A group of sullen huts beside a beach.
I want to cry out 'Wonderful!'
just for the tattooed boy.
But, of course, I don't.
Ah, The Dream Restaurant!
Fat black pigs tied up outside.
I suppose that's 'different'.
I step out on to a long stretch of open beach
the mangroves behind me,
A lone man gathers seaweed
washed in by the tide.
It fetches a good price in Japan they say.
After a while I take the road again
leaving the beach through a tiny village of grass huts
All around the pale seaweed spread to dry.
Reaching the road I misdirect, inadvertently,
a couple on a motorbike
and head for home ( I mean my room)
along a straight and busy road.
The other road would probably have been
pretty much the same.
No 'difference'.
But still, there's something more.
I've walked right round the island
and when I tell people that
their eyes go wide with disbelief.
'But that's so far!'
And it is.
At least five miles.