Undefeated, a Boxing Lesson
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Pooretry for others...by and or inspired by - but mostly for
for Ted Box and Seeker.
UndefeaTed. A Boxing Lesson.
A friend, off the Vineyard,
wrighted a ship.
And, perhaps himself,
and certainly the worlds ‘round him.
His words were fashioned, shipshape and watertight
as were the splines and bungholes and rudder pins and
All the Things I didn’t know what they were.
All the Things I didn’t know what they meant.
All the Things unrevealed.
To me.
All the things shown to me but which remained unrevealed.
To me.
All the things said to me.
All the things writ to the world.
All the world is changing.
Only the oceany world has the courtesy to
plainly reveal her shifting, her changings. Over and over.
The shiftless soil world hides its change in the vault of Time.
The tides are honesty. The currents are candor.
The waves~ credulous and scrupulous.
And voluptuous.
In form.
In energy.
In shape.
In fact.
The world.
A friend, off the Vineyard
built an autobiograph.
And set it afloat.
Asea.
It’s got a name.
It floats.
It’s accreted a following.
Shorebirds, turned beakward,
into the setting sun.
The sun we all face.
The one which presages darksun days.
And eternal nights.
Starless nights.
“The Seeker.”
I’m sure, if asked, he’d say
that there are many Seekers the boat is named after.
I’m sure he’d say that to Seek is to move,
to leave wake, to summon the winds of change and to ride them.
I’m sure he’d say that we are all, in our ways, Seekers.
I am sure that he’d say that to Seek is to be
Happily unhappy with This and thus press on
unceasingly, unflaggingly, inerrantly, inviolably,
to That.
Unbowed spirit to bowsprit.
Capstan to Captain.
There are meant to be more dreams than dreamers.
I fear there are more dreams than dreamers.
There was meant to be one Dream among many dreams
given birth by, given flight by, given surging urgency by
One Dreamer.
Pintles.
Copper rivets.
Bobstays ‘n stuffing box.
Caulking.
Dynel.
Gudgeons.
Hatches and hatchets.
Cypress.
White Oak.
P
i
n
e
.
Oakum.
Cotton.
A friend, off the Vineyard
Built an autobiograph.
I don’t know from boats.
I don't even have the decency to rightly remember the
Stories he earned on docks, on shiprails, amidships,
out where stories grow larger than storytellers, out where
the sea is as deep as the sky.
I don’t see how it matters if your vessel flounders.
I don’t see how it matters if your vessel founders.
I know that even dreamers who are flotsam
until the ocean jettisons them from deck and jets ‘em to seafloor
can be guidelights to those in the same wind, caught up in the same current,
channeling their inner sailor, in their way, dry-footedly from the dry green
Edge of Freedom.
If you press on, chart and re-chart your course...
I don't see how it matters where you end up.
It is How you end up which matters.
Which is how you loosed the ropes.
Underway and on your way.
How you end up is the lesson for those who follow
in your trackless blue path.
I know that a Lighthouse and a Northstar are each
Necessary Lights to those lost or under way under the
dark spell of a salty night.
One wards off, one beckons;
they each guide.
Here. Not here.
Both waymaking for Seekers.
Copyright © Stephe Watson | Year Posted 2018
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