don’t we?
Adrift like splintered timber,
hulls of mighty war-beasts
whose doom was less
than they deserve
and more
than we had hoped for.
Bereft in the thin veil
of moonlight
hiding
the soulless wonder of
our own wayward songs,
singers who lament,
lamenters who mourn.
Besmirched.
In the gentle swells of this life,
like the early moments of wavedom
We float
Looking askance at the sinewed
Hopes of our companions.
Bopping along like so many pieces of
timber
bodies immersed
hair saturated
limbs tired,
We are the flotsam and jetsam.
Destroyed
Discarded to avoid something else’s destruction
We draw long of our briny cup
And look heavily into the depths below.
How curious
That they who ride beside us
in their once-mighty vessels, patched up with paint,
slopped together with tar,
tell us it is not as bad
Not so bad as all that
and all this
But they don’t know.
They’ve not been been discarded jetsamly
And so become the flotsam of their own bewildered
life.
Which way is North, good Sir?
For I am adrift at sea and lost.
I spin and circle and dive.
I’m sorry, good Sir? You say it’s that way?
Just another day to land, you say?
By boat.
Ah, well, all is as it is
and here I am.
And I notice
that there you are, too.
Swim we shall, then,
swim onwards, ever onwards,
Swim.
The height of our groping for life
and the end of our gurgling push
shall find its own tumultuous reprise
in the fickle shades of Summer.