The Sea

i remain in a place i do not like above and beyond all of the other stuff. So i tried to occupy myself with little things to do (and a few big ones too). One of the little things was to go through more old files to find a draft of a short story i wrote but now can only find the start. Of course, i didn’t find it. The search will continue tomorrow. But i did find something from several years ago, like the spring of 1968, late May i’m guessing, when i had yet to really experience the grown up world (even though moi never really grew up, i got my dose of dealing with grown up: still not too fond of it). It was aboard the USS Hawkins (DD-873), my first ship, in Newport, Rhode Island. i‘m also guessing i had the duty, probably stood a quarterdeck evening watch, and couldn’t sleep, so i wrote. i would like to think i wandered out to the weather decks, the forecastle, but i suspect that’s a stretch. Regardless, i read what i wrote that night just a while ago, and it gave me peace. The seas, the Atlantic, the Pacific, and all the others fitting every mood. Infinite. Humble, Peaceful, Stormy, Raging.

i am stopping for a while, languishing in the peace of the Atlantic, a long time ago and a long distance away from me tonight.

the Atlantic:
humble tonight,
sitting calm;
warships languidly rolling
moored to the piers in nests;
the Atlantic reflecting
light.

the sea:
fit for sentimentality,
recollection,
wishes for alterations are
pure futility
though wishes
can’t be erased.

the Atlantic:
raucous tomorrow perhaps;
i am entranced,
rolling happy in sometime
fit for two,
but tonight
humble.

i remain wishing.

2 thoughts on “The Sea

  1. I like it! I have been in that Atlantic, calm and raucous. Officer Candidate School, then four years Surface Warfare Officer on a tin can on east coast on active duty. The Navy in its infinite wisdom made me, a liberal arts major, an engineer mostly. 18 more years as a chaplain in the naval reserve. Never got back in a ship; played with Marines, Seabees, Fleet Hospital (like a MASH), Coast Guard and even drilled with the Air Force. The Navy made me grow up and taught me a lot. I go to see every part of that ship inside and out, top to bottom, boilers, reduction gears, fuel tanks, you name it. Lots of respect for my engineering Snipes. Favorite job was navigator. Learned a lot about people and how to treat them. Learned about responsibility. Traveled up and down the east coast and on that destroyer but actually traveled further as as reservist, as far as Kodiak Island and also the Pribilovs in the Bering Sea. P.S. You must like e.e cummings, but you still have a few too many capitalizations, ha! Thank you for your poetry. I am a prose person and a trained historian, but I like to read poetry sometimes. “Fair winds and,” well, you know….

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