Nor a Hand


This mornings fog hid her from sight

a ghost ship adrift that set upon a reef.


She’s an auld wreck they be telling me,

abandoned, gave her soul to the seas.


Anonymous, salt corroding erosion stripped

away her dignity, almost a dry dock divorcee.


A be the days when she graced the waves and

her womb weighted with maritime magnanimity.


Now not a flag or a ribbon, not a bell or a gull,

not a rope or a chain, nor a hand, to guide her.