I am a holder of cargo,
I am a keeper of lives.
Life of one hundred years
keeps me adrift, to be tossed
lifelessly by the moving soul
of the earth.
I am adventure. I carried
your fathers. They loved me
as a mother, and I bore my
children in my dark, wooden womb.
I am the plague, I brought the
vermin and death.
I am the world, you can see
it in my sails, flowing with the wind
of one hundred thousand souls,
some home, some still here.