Manifest
Like the creaks of an old Dutch trading fluyt
Your sighs; echo with sounds of room for crew.
So deep that one can’t help but wonder;
What was held inside when the wood was new?
What burdens left your hull this way,
Your framework weathered, your halyard worn?
What happenings left your soul this way,
The edges frayed and almost torn?
Was it summer storms of years now passed
That tossed your bow across the sea,
Or doldrums that left your limp-sailed mast
To drift across the waves to me?
Perhaps all the weight from o’er the years
Bent the floorboards beneath mid deck…
And all the traveling to distant piers,
Was too much for your heart to trek.
I wonder if the boat smiths knew,
For even now I never could,
The shape you’d take when life’s winds blew
As they labored over the young pine wood…
-SP
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