The Wild Wild Sea

I saw it again this evening. Black sail in a pale yellow sky and just as before, in a moment, it was gone where the grey gulls fly. If it happens again, I shall worry that only a strange ship could fly; and my sanity scans the horizon in the light of a darkening sky.

That night, as I walked in my slumber, I waded into the sea strand and I swam with the moon and her lover until I lost sight of the land. I swam 'til the night became morning. Black sail in a reddening sky. Found myself on the deck of a rolling ship so far where no grey gulls fly. All around me was silence as if mocking my frail human hopes; and a question mark hung in the canvas for the wind that had died in the ropes.

I may have slept for an hour, I may have slept for a day, for I woke in a bed of white linen and the sky was the color of clay. At first just a rattle of canvas and the gentlest breath on my face, but a galloping line of white horses said that soon we're in for a race. The gentle sigh turned to a howling and the grey sky, she angered to black; and my anxious eyes searched the horizon with the gathering sea at my back. Did I see the shade of a sailor on the bridge through the wheelhouse pane held fast to the wheel of the rocking ship as I squinted my eye in the rain? For the ship had turned into the wind against the storm to brace; and underneath the sailor's hat I saw my father's face.

If a prayer today is spoken, please offer it for me when the bridge to heaven is broken and you're lost on the wild, wild sea.

Gordon Matthew Sumner