The dawn of a journey; the slate, as yet, blank.
A charm of the breeze attached at the flank.
A cathartic virtue posed as an outcast
For your ship and your crew, dead hand of the past.

Once veiled by the mist and engulfed by ice,
The albatross kiss framed your quarters at night.
Sound luck unheard cleared a space on your shelf;
You killed the poor bird and held it yourself

Its merit unlaced and outrage profuse,
Obliged as a vigil, so strung as a noose
To remiss of a sin you couldn’t undo.
Sometimes a captain’s remiss of his crew.

The struggle of hope in alms of despair
Caught in your throat as you finish your prayer.
Once woven together, as roots with the earth,
Now tortured by weather, the fruits of a curse

The mast downed by lightning, the sky’s bitter wrath;
The swirling foundations of an arrogant past.
And though your veins pulsed as the crew flew about,
Your body was choked by the legs that gave out

Who knows if a curse was the cause of your death?
Perhaps all you stole was a free bird’s last breath.
The ocean, denied all its depths, would agree
A mariner in plight is a dead man at sea.