Seabones

Shipwreck
Old ship bones lie buried and rotten
Reflecting a story that’s long forgotten
Symbol of strength
Pride of the ocean
An ill fate soon to be gotten
Flag blowing from the high mast
White billowing sails
Long days on the wide open ocean
Casting their fates t’will soon be too late
As the sun goes to sleep without motion

*
Port of call on islands across the Caribbean
With many wild stories to tell
Rum and Sugar and maybe some gold
With pirates hot on their tail
Drinking sweet rum in the late evening sun
Singing songs of women with assets
Dead heads in the morning pounding their skulls
Trying to find a way to get past it

*
Red sky that morning gave an ominous warning
Of danger north of Hatteras
Straight into the gale without any quale
She drove as the storm came at us
If they’d been there before we don’t know for sure
They surely did not remember
Since they rode without fear on this ghost ship of death
Into the ill-fated storm of September
Gargantuan waves crashed over the bow
Drowning out the sailors’ last cry
Cargo and ship sank into the dip
As the cane of September swept by

Pounded and broken the ship in a swoon
Without sailor or cargo or sail
Everything had been cast the ship heaved its last
To lie in its grave in the dunes

For the next hundred years entombed in the sand
It took its rest without moving
Until a cane of October came washing over
Leaving open its coffin for viewing
Now families with children climb high on the dunes
Assuming but never knowing
Ships’ bones tell no tales
That’s left to me
And my imagination’s still growing

Nags Head, NC Shipwreck photo: Dwight L. Roth

Painting – All is Lost: Dwight L. Roth