|
|
|
The Kissing Saint Jane
Somewhere out there along these shoals,
the bones of men ground in the sands
yet glisten in the blinding sun.
Wild horses and their little foals,
on this horizon's hinterlands,
rear up against a gloaming sky...and run.
In the high sawgrass, among the dunes,
back in a cove, down underwater -
no one knows where all the treasures lie.
Come a night with one too many moons
for dancing with the Devil's daughter -
all the very best of sailors came to die.
Where all the pirates came to die.
The tides were eeried calm last night
off Hatteras. And all the stars were cold.
I could not sleep, so walked the deck
of my little boat, The Blaze.
I drank until the first of light
recalled those drinks and days of old.
The hair went up behind my neck
at a distant gathering gathering in the haze.
I saw them coming, out of phase.
Twixt Antioch and Ocracoke -
blank shells of men who looked...
who looked like Hell and smelled of smoke
came dragging something through the sand.
In chains and rope all tethered and
it seemed to me that brass sea gulls
had gone to nesting in their skulls.
Embodied in the tides, they were emerging
from the deep, as white as foam,
as coarse as all the sand was surging -
upon a land that was not their home.
No land could ever call them home.
Somewhere out there along these shoals
the shells of men, hard by the sands,
lined up to sail the bounding main
with writs of passage in their tattered coats.
Pale men with eyes as black as coals...
the burns of rope yet in their hands,
or, such is the myth of The Kissing Saint Jane -
some of which sank and some of which floats.
Then she took shape, east of The Cape,
three masts high and three sheets to the wind.
A shade that I'd tried to erase
with alcohol and masking tape.
But in my dreams, around that bend,
I'd seen Her time and time again.
When all the blood drained from my face,
I knew our race was her's to win.
The chase was her's to win.
Her men came trodding from out the waves,
or washed ashore like barrel staves,
too worthless even to condemn!
When I close my eyes, I am one of them.
What I saw was seen by others, too.
The vision of a crippled crane.
But that was now and this is then
for the ghost of The Kissing Saint Jane.
Old sailors, taken at their word
for what they've seen or what they thought
they saw when all the sky went green
and all the sea was churning black.
How soon believed? What silence taught?
I know the way it gets...serene,
becalmed within the Specter's tack.
Were we all that delusional, insane?
Wide awake and breathing warm,
who'd seen the cowl that comes before the storm?
On the prow of The Kissing Saint Jane?
The numbskulls of a harbor's whiskey bar
who played their cards close to the vest
and only played the cards that they were dealt -
they just prefered to let the past go by.
They took their bearings from the Northern Star
and sailed the currents they knew best.
Not prone to superstition, they just felt...
some other crew might greet them in the sky.
And never cared to know the what or why.
The clouds hung like a cutlass blade
above the waters to the East.
The men were busy hoisting sails
high in the rigging, hand o'er hand.
Prizes there! And fortunes to be made
if they could turn that wooden beast
and drive upon those Spanish snails!
Goodbye to love! Farewell to land!
They see her to this day, they say,
the few of them who lived to tell -
the frigate half of fog, half foam,
arising on her phantom swell...
blinking wide at some forthcoming squall,
blind herald of the hurricane!
All shivering timbers and rattling chain.
She will blaze across the open sea,
then vanish, having taken all
save for unlikely shrift like me.
She might have been a mercantile
bound out of some empoyer's slip,
or a Caribbean rumrunner,
or some blackguard's pirate ship.
No one really knows for sure
from where or whence she came.
But they all know her dire import,
and they all know her name.
Somewhere out there, its all the same.
We are safe away and under sail,
three hundred miles from anywhere
when a scarab lights upon the rail
and walks up on my hand.
At last! I think I understand.
They go to sea who cannot stay.
They toss their fitfull lives away
to master knots and go with knives,
to challenge sky and sea and waves...
who have no harbor, and no graves.
The Watchman, halfway up his mast,
cries, "Ship ahoy! Goddamn the noise!"
The mate he pales and hits the boards
before he even hears the rest.
A spar heaves in to crush his chest.
Gone! Like that! To just rewards
in the witness of the sacred and profane.
And the watchman howls, "God save us, boys!
There rides The Kissing Saint Jane!"
There rides The Kissing Saint Jane.
I'd seen her once myself at sea,
and just before my ship went down.
I cannot swim, but I was spared to watch
the mighty swimmers drown.
She shrove as close as we are now
and glistened in the driving rain.
To this, I would be glad to swear
by the sails of The Kissing Saint Jane!
- Vote for this poem -
| Please Critique This Poem |
|
|
|
|
|
|
