There is no comfort on the storm tossed sea,
Where haply death claims lives without a trace.
There in the froth, the gale, the waves that be,
Convulsed from clime to clime, and now embrace
What I just cannot fathom nor conceal,
The dark and boundless depths that now revealā
The lives, long gone, a homeless corpse up churn'd
The shores that change but ne'er cease to recall
A rage that sank both sailour and the learn'd,
No knells, no coffins, graves, or ev'n headstones at all!
O, rolling ocean, ship's wreckage contained
Inside thy stomach deep and rotting be,
The slave, the free, the captain thou retained;ā
Mere bones, that once were faces, they to me
Are nameless and unknown, they be not mine,
All wrapt in tangle, fathom deep in brine.
Somewhere someone adored and loved their form;
Yet now fore'er engulf'd in bub'ling foam,ā
Still in the barnacles that are their dorm,
Old ship was matchless to the stormāhear thy last groan.
Yet standing on thy shores, heave to and fro,
No evidence of death that catch my eyes;
Thy waters glass, they sometime toss and go
Without impending gloom, no darken'd skies.
My love, ocean, rekindled all for thee,
Within my heart, within my soul, and see;ā
Time changes not thy waves wherein I play'd
As childhood waned, adulthood now I findā
Both cheerful and the cheerless waters spray'd,
Thou givest hours of cheerfulness and death unkind.
( Dedicated to Tryst. )
Ā© Timothy 20 January 2015