Still Waters

Blackwater

Dawn - the mist hangs heavy and clings close to its vaporous home.

Rising from the ground little more than a few feet, as though imprisoned between two worlds -

the wet, cloying, mud infused shallows and the ethereal chrome of sky; the day new born.

The breeze rushes chill across the boat-bobbing bay,

Slicing the surface to shards of gunmetal grey.

Storm clouds pin-pricked by diamonds of sheer white light.

Sol Invictus - destroys the passage of the night.

The sky intones its presence to the heave of the sea...

The dawn turns to day, gulls flock then turn, rising high,

Riding up through solid air, worshipping the sky.

The sea turns to mottled shades of deep mermaid green,

The prow slices through soft surf with merciless mien.

Ropes tense then whisper to the stiffening surf...

The strengthening breeze brings the scent of the ocean,

The sludge of the sandbanks engulfed by its motion.

Beating to windward, the keel heaves over to port,

Jib and mainsail crack with the wind then billow taut.

The river sends forth its fresh breath to the sea...

Tacking across water via invisible ways,

Charted by seafarers from old forgotten days.

Around sand bars and spits we hold our course steady,

As the water around us swirls, foams and eddies.

Gulls wheel - lured by ozone from exposed mud flats...

Closing on Caroline still garbed in white and red,

The songs of those long gone days replay through my head:

Something in the Air, Grateful Dead, The Rolling Stones,

Echo down the years - and many more, now unknown.

The ship calls out in soundless witness to the days past, now gone.

Onward to Bridwell, the x-nuclear station -

Generating power to pollute the nation.

The beach oddly deserted at this time of day -

Or perhaps the uranium's not yet decayed.

Two Concrete silos and a cooling tank, reach out to piss in the sea.

We pass orange-sailed barges and trimmed fishing smacks,

Jiving with the tail wind and then the long-haul back.

Thirty miles or more under sail in just a day,

Turning to shelter we drop anchor in the bay.

In the stretched golden light of the weltering sky, the sea rushes back to devour the land.

We reach mooring and haven with a feeling of loss. Something has gone that should not have been lost.

The sea reaches out to reclaim what it owns.