-Gripping Blue-

-Gripping Blue-

I saw a ship along the coast 

Long since skeletal

Her belly impaled on the blades of rock that surely killed her

The frozen violence of her death lay bare before me

To see her was to be assaulted by the scene of her

Possessed by her fate

A cacophonous onslaught of image and sense

Vivid and imposing 

In mind or eye, there she was 

Still dying

And yet, here she lay 

The story complete

A grave in low tide 

How haunting she must be in the light of the moon, barely visible beneath the placid dark on a mild night

Her corpse

The illusion of permanence 

Imperceptably decaying day after day

I wondered as to her story and the lives she bore

She must have completed many a voyage

Weathered storms untold

Crossed treacherous waters

Sheltered in disparate ports

And welcomed the lives of her charges in the refuge of her body

Had she thought herself sturdy or swift?

How heartbreaking the truth must have seemed in the waning hours of her bloodless death 

Did any else die, or was she lonely in the last moments of her watery paralysis?

I felt I could see her there on whatever fateful day it was when she went off course

Helpless in the grip of a hungry sea

Skittering crew 

Panicked and frantic

Had they run to deck in the dead of night?

Bare in their briefs

Hoping for better

Only for terror to swallow them whole

There atop the body of a failing vessel

How cold their choices must be

Tides are strong

Rocks are sharp and many

Beneath foaming force and against pitiless rock, where do you go? 

On ship or in the maw of blue and white are you free?

Or...

Perhaps it had not ended so dire for the lives aboard

Perhaps they had gone on

Had it scarred them, if they had? 

A wound on the story of their lives

Was the desecration of her seaworthy form lodged in their hearts?

Whatever their fate hers was clear as the liquid glass that was her tomb

Pulled or pushed or blown

Tossed and battered and punctured

Flooded and invaded 

How wrenching the failure of her frail body must have been

It did not matter the design of her build 

Nor the cleverness of her captain

Whatever glory had been hers rendered mute by the passions of a petulant and treacherous shoal

Time goes on, but still she remains in the sea of my mind

Desperate & adrift among tempestuous waters 

Going again and again to our ruin

...

She never left, nor did I