Gregory Richard Barden Poet Rhyme

Notes About The Poem

a crow’s command

* This poem almost cost a college student his enrollment, as he plagiarized it for his final exam, (the highest form of flattery they say) … I begged them not to expel him, though they made him call me and gave him community service. I was rather flattered by the whole thing, as I’d only been writing a couple of months. *

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I be a common salty once
          no captain's bars, did bear
               yet blessed was I to venture
     where few a skipper dared

from crow's nest high aloft, I saw
          those bright coast beacons wink
               thru biting spray's December gale
     what shoals and reefs would sink

for countless days I rocked atop
          that oaken spar’s good length
               as wake and skies conveyed my eyes
     Lord Neptune's sullen strength

aye, busy dogs, the mates and jacks
          bent hard while tasked below …
               as toward the sky, a glass to eye
     my post waved to-and-fro

first was I to e'er spot land
          my voice, the first to yell -
               first to sight a skull and bones
     loud-clanged that warning bell

"thar she blows!" was oft' my cry
          if spied foamed breach, had I
               and "friend or foe?!?" the query barked
     when strange sails cleaved the sky

but moments to becalm my soul
          as swells tick-tocked the time
               were star-filled nights, a bullion moon
     and the phosphorescent brine

the darkest times were battlements
          when the ship groaned with its might
               but never dark, those eventides -
     sea and vault - awash with light!

quite rare it was to find this tar
          midst the deck or down below
               and rarer still would I abdicate
     my realm there, high the crow …

well, I'm adrift on shore now
          with ol’ brittle bones and gray
               yet in this lubber's mind I’ll still
     climb masts to watch … and sway

I bounce wee kin on knobby knees
          and spin them my swabbie tales -
               St Elmo's Fire and scorching skies
     fierce battles, storms, and whales

and when sweet angels task me
          to that dark and heav'nly crow …
               I'll bend gaze to my looking glass
     and give a hearty … "tally-ho!"

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Alison A Smith September 9, 2026 at 6:15 AM A richly characterful nautical monologue, full of salt-spray diction, sturdy rhythm, and a wonderfully sustained old-seafarer’s voice. The staggered stanza layout evokes the vessel’s rise and fall, while the recurring height of the crow’s nest becomes both a vivid lookout post and an affecting lifelong vantage point—from youthful adventure to the final, “heav’nly crow.”