A natural bay
Where I can find safe harbor
To replace my mast
After her winds came and blew
My only mizzen away.
I was born in a landlocked getaway town
Where all the colors were black, gray, or brown.
Jobs at the steel mill were ratcheting down.
It was not in my future to stay.
So, I took a long walk off a very short pier,
An unschooled, untraveled recruit buccaneer
On a quest to cross Neptune’s vast salty frontier.
Hopped a slow boat to China one day.
Underway on the Crescent City, it seemed
The ocean was wider than I’d ever dreamed.
A ship load of sinners, our souls unredeemed
Steaming west toward whatever there was.
Keelung told Hong Kong to call Singapore.
Subic Bay badgered Mombasa for more.
Sea legs, as always unsteady ashore,
Even more so with liquor and drugs.
Bilge water sloshed in the depths of the hold.
The mizzen mast learned what the typhoon foretold.
I was sea duty tempered and Shell Back enrolled;
Wasn’t nothing but maritime norm.
I was born in a hard luck blue collar town.
Half the way broken and half the way down.
But time gifts its renaissance scepter and crown
To a jack tar who’s weathered the storm.
Chase the breakers out of the harbour
before the customs boat appears.
Strike the sails and tack to larboard
then comes the old familiar fear.
Will they run us, or will they gun us?
Damn these sails, catch the wind.
Spume and foam roll and spin us,
forgive us Lord for we have sinned.
Packed to the gunwales with contraband
trying to make a dishonest living.
Running close twixt rocks and strand,
not only the sea is unforgiving.
Soon we'll be in open water,
run the mizzen, strike the main.
Then, God willing, well outrun her
and run a windward spray again.
You Do It to Me
By M. Griswold
04142020
Fiddle with me, oh lovely tender.
Fondle me so gently to render.
Touch me where I desire to be risen.
Tempt me so to heighten my mizzen.
Tease me to fulfill our love's potential
Caress me for my heart's beat essential.
Hold me close for full affirmation.
Softly kiss me within true conviction.
Love me long for our life's true measure.
Fulfill us so with love's passion pleasure.
GOD’S SPARKLE
When you turn your boat’s bow
To the morning sun
And the mizzen now is shaded
By yellow sails
Your face is to the rising tide
And into the breeze
Scattering the churned waves
And God’s sparkle surrounds you
15 December 2019
How black the seas in a pounding storm!
The lanterns were all blown out.
Only the lights within still burned
For crewmen strong and stout.
The flash from the clouds would scarce reveal
The main and the mizzen bare.
Only a jib on the foremast flew
To point her homeward fair.
The captain on the helm withstood
The gale and pelting spray.
“Only an act of God”, he thought
“Could spare us all today!”
His ship was a fine one, swift and sound,
But was failing against the waves.
Only the quarter of a harbor near
Would save this crew so brave.
The squall raised up a fearsome wave
To send them down to hell.
Only to give the captain view
Of a lighthouse o’er the rail.
That pulsing sentinel guided him
Through rocks and shallow shoal.
Only to bring them safely home,
A haggard twenty souls.
Only a Lighthouse
By: Dean Wood
7/19/2017
Quatrain
1st Place
Lighthouse Contest
Sponsor: Eve Roper
My youth was like a treasure map
in finest detail drawn,
experiences marker buoys,
of perils would they warn.
Islands of opportunity
places I dreamt of most
all littered with ambition
scattered flotsam on the coast.
Routes were laid and lines were drawn
all set in black and white,
the course into my future set
the outlook seeming bright.
But time and circumstance swept in
before I had made sail
and tore the rigging from the yards
the voyage doomed to fail.
The plans I made are ragged
like the mizzen on the mast
optimism's caulking gone
though it was meant to last.
So take me to the harbour
and push me out to sea
let me be blown by winds of fate
to what will be will be.
Billowing white
A tall masted ship
Gleaming wet
Sped on
In to a setting sun
Mizzen and top gallants flying
Such golden light
Fell upon a ship
That sped on
In to the setting sun
Billowing white
Translucent too
Such golden llight
Fell upon a ship
That shone
On the big blue
In to the setting sun
She sailed westwards
Followeed a setting sun
Disappeared with it too
Golden light
Replaced with blue
She sailed westwards
Golden light shone too
A ship
Swallowed in colour
In to the setting sun
The table is laid and untouched
Blankets of silence hold sway,
The table is laid and untouched,
Day becomes day after day
The lamplight’s burning out.
The floorboards creak and shrink
The lamplight’s burning out,
Yet Marie she does not sink.
Her structure towers strong,
Unflustered by passing time,
Her structure towers strong,
With timbers robbed of shine.
The curtains sheathed with dust,
Portholes caked with salt,
The curtains sheathed with dust
Within this floating vault.
No helmsman at the wheel,
No rats play in the grain,
No helmsman at the wheel,
No sails to hoist again.
Becalmed and graveyard still
Upon the glassy sea
Becalmed and graveyard still
Their fate a mystery
The occupants of space
Weathering quiet grief,
The occupants of space.
Stole by some master thief.
Who walked upon her decks?
Who climbed her mizzen mast?
Who walked upon her decks?
And saw what came to pass?
Where have the people gone?
Blankets of silence hold sway,
Where have the people gone?
Where have they gone away?
A ghost ship of the night,
By day she is no less,
A ghost ship of the night,
The dead Marie Celeste.
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