The Mahogany Ships

by Jeff Lester

1.
In the great court of King Phillip,
the brave twins put sword to the great unknown;
eloquent, they spoke of the right of passage
and the conquest of pagan tribes.
Together, they smithed such fine words
that ball shot from shipboard cannon
made no sound on flesh or chain
- though none thought to ask
of the watermarks that lay within those pages.
None save for the mariner,
who kept his mind quiet
lest they take the chance from him.

2.
In the high towers above the sea,
under lock and key, the wives met chastity
with the midnight lard
- until one of them again forced open her thighs,
this time to spill blood and soil linen.
That infant found much despair
when it met sea air at the gape
and its cry sent the mid-wives running
into the night, lanterns aloft with flames
bravely daring that foul breeze.
By morning, the twins had sent rats
from every town and city
to the mariner’s dock
with every ******* son they could find.

3.
After the Cape, what call came to the mariner
from beyond the unknown precipice?
That proof and others went asunder
with each new bearing from his sextant:
at the late hour of the watch,
the only sound that gave comfort
was the lash for the night watchmen
asleep in the ship’s tower
so that under-decks, all might dream kindly
of trade winds, not Sargasso seas.
But at the dead reckoning, when the mariner
turned hard into the wind
without instruments to guide him,
the voice of twins came uninvited
and without warning from across the seas.
Then, when he needed utmost quiet,
it was the call from within
that disturbed him most
for it was in a language
that he could not discern or decipher
as none of it was countenanced
or considered under the charter’s seal.





4.
Great ships may **** and plunder
for a time, but rocks will break hearts
and ship’s hulls without stars to guide them.
Now undersea, the mariner’s bleached log
speaks not of the long night at the Cape’s turn
nor of those that would mourn his passing.
Instead, the mariner wrote of the frailty
of pitch and mahogany – before discarding
that precious gift to begin again with words
for those sent high into the rigging
in search of the distant shore.
In rhythm with the sea, he wrote
of his fear of footmarks in the sands
and of the solace of burials at home and sea.
He wrote of the calm before the great storm;
of strange lights in the southern skies
and of the uncertain passage of travellers
that confront seas that waken in the dark of night.
All that and more he wrote:
words that might have withstood any test
but rejection – in the end, the sea took it all
in an act of preservation.

5.
On a far-flung coast in Western Australia,
a raging storm from beyond the Cape
wrests another great ship from its hiding place.
The vessel has no name carved on it
fore or aft – and no mast that a fresh sail,
filled with wind, might again take it
to another shore. Though timber and iron
last the vigil for a time,
the voices that called out to the mariner
linger there on that shore
with an improper burial.
It takes a full decade for a patient sea
to bare its plunder, but only an instant
for it to change its mind for the morning.

6.
At low tide on the new day, descendants
from the Old World discover the pieces
of broken pottery that the storm has left behind.
Some wake innocently in the ruins, having spent
that wild night copulating on the shore.  
Others, with fresh paper and instruments
in their hands, search until nightfall
for the great ship that still plies its trade
of war and conquest from beneath the sands.
None find what they seek, though later
some might ***** a stone monument
on the site that others, four centuries earlier,
would have found suitable for a light-house –
if they had foreseen that lonely place
where the shards always flee
with the rising tide of a fresh sea.