sea

Crescent bay
penninsula
reaching out with open docks
and the wood stained silver by salt and sun
in slats that measured the distance of feet
to sea
where those old drunk voyages came to light,
a twelve year old intoxicated on a dram of rum
and sleeping in a hammock made of sails
in a musty foreward hold.

Rigging eloped and misplaced cannons,
yards of silk and antiquated lanterns
swinging in the skies frail song of ghost breeze
in certain latitudes transected by the equator,
we used to know
the grim solicitudes of landings
with anchors and wet chains wrapped in seaweed
where we would send the long boats out
to meet certain merchants in harbor song
of Western pubs.

But aye, the sailor's curse and superstitions,
warnings against leaving on some cursed Friday
out to that horizon
that nestles with sky,
or the untold misfortunes
of having a lady aboard
with all those greased grunting men
and those rough hands
made into tallow from pulling rigging
when we could have had a floating house
made from white marble
if the technics had been right,
a ship made by an empire's fortune
but not of planks or timber,
crafted from stone
and sinking and rising with thunderous waves
carving through storms
without the steel gunwales of famous dead dreadnoughts
that volleyed shells across the reaches of Jutland
during miserable WWI.

Some days a sabot,
tilting against the wind
with sail stretched taught
bobbing like a cork.
But one wondered about the old man steering it
if he did so out of joy or escape from his marriage
as the storm heads settled in black grey
coming in from the fjords
and asking of those sailors lost in the seas
if they were ghosts or corpse or drowned
or simply intoxicated with the depths of the sea,
leaving their Navy
for the mysteries of the Afterlife
undone in knots of bowline and figure eight
treasures of Life sunk five thousand fathoms
as the sea's surface whipped in froth of ocean's foam
and asked us imploringly
if we really came from such a setting,
all those reaches and gybes
for the sake of finding our undesignated island
where the palms harbored coconuts
and sand crabs scuttered
across those desert isles
mapped by colored inks by imagineless men
who had yet to view their fate in the reflection of a tidepool's mirror