Jeff Bird - "Souvenir Flutes". A baby blue tug goes putting down the Amazon. It is a battered boat, seaweed-stained, but its tiller still works, its radio, its hand-cranked orange juicer. There is a crew of three: a captain, a navigator, a cook. One of them is a ghost; they know one of them is a ghost, hear the rattling chains every night, but the other two haven't figured out which of them it is. At every meal, at every anchor, every time they spy another ship on the river or a bird of paradise on the shore, two are thinking, Are you a ghost are you a ghost are you a ghost are you a ghost? The third, the ghost himself, is not thinking anything. He is the perfect imitation of a man, afloat on the water, travelling somewhere. He sups with the humans, plays cards, talks dreamily about family back home, their distant destination. When they go to sleep he lifts his phantom chains, rattles them, stalks the deck. He feels lucky to be here, where it is humid and noisy, where the air smells of red flowers. The insects are chittering. The birds call. Around dawn, three men will sit up in their cots and stare across the room at each other and wonder.

[Jeff Bird plays music with Cowboy Junkies and a thousand other people. He also plays the theremin. "Souvenir Flutes" is from Rhythm & Entertainment. More music here.]

(image by Nicolas Amori)