Seafaring Song

Tzyy Hsu
Professor O’Luanaigh
CRW2300
18 October 2017

Seafaring Song

She toyed with the vegetables on her plate,
then sighed and scraped the rest into the fire.
She stood now, suddenly, blue eyes stared straight,
and with a purpose, picked up her lyre.

She sang a song of a shore with smooth sand.
She sang a song of a sailor’s first knot.
Ropes that would tangle by young clumsy hand,
would soon be woven without a thought.

She sang of her worry and anguish while
the harsh, briny winds stung his tender flesh.
He’d bear it all with a laugh and a smile,
for he was the seed sown for his children to thresh.

On a weathered deck, slippery with scales,
of dignity and innocence stripped bare,
he’d climb the crow’s nest, he’d raise the sails.
A grin and a sackcloth is all he would wear.

It would be thirty years before Fate would strike
and, in a storm, overboard he would fall.
A sudden end to his life of perch and pike
left her and her lyre playing for bare walls.