Hook on a slow Tuesday

When the captain emerges from his cabin, he figures
today will be his day, as much his as the hook on his stump 
or his right to melon-sweet revenge, but by noon, 
he’s still on the main deck, feeling like a wooden puppet 
with strings attached to his arms and legs, waiting for a jerk. 
He stares at the never-changing shores and thinks 
about Monday morning and his dream. Mama Hook 
was breastfeeding him. Her warmth lingered when 
he woke and stayed with him as he plucked his smallclothes 
from the washing line, even when Smee gave him his daily shave.
But the warmth had already gone when he stabbed Bill Jukes for, 
the life of him, Hook can’t remember why. He decides it must 
had something to do with that blasted leader of the Lost Boys. 
Pan hasn’t shown himself in weeks again.
Probably too high on pixie dust, floating on a pillow cloud, 
not a rotten thought for his adversary. 
That lard-filled saddle goose, 
blithering bilge-dwelling crustacean,
egomaniacal capuchin-sized bloated green tree frog!
Hook looks around the deck, but there’s no one to shoot.
Smee had left for the lagoon with the rest of the crew. 
Another creeping through the bush to steal a peek 
at a mermaid’s breasts when they rinse their shells and starfish. 
Not the captain. Does the Crocodile ever feel this trapped, 
does it ever hunger for a buffalo calf and just eat it, never mind 
lusting after the tasty snack it had long ago? Does a Lost Boy 
ever wonder at night, curled up in his nook, how it would feel 
to be twenty-three? Hook remembers he collected maps
as a young buccaneer. Maps with riddles that lead to islands 
where underneath every fifth coconut tree there’s treasure 
or an empty hole. Maybe he still has the maps, buried in chests.
A tropical breeze ruffles his black curls, and he turns to the sea. 
Is it too late for him to pillage and plunder and find pirate love? 
He looks down at his hook and flexes his phantom fingers.
Everyone loses something underway,
he figures.