POEM TITLE
The Old Sailor's Last Night atThe Lobster Pot Pub
POEM
The Old Sailor’s Last Night at the Lobster Pot Pub
“When chill November surly blast
Made fields and forests bare,
One ev’ning, as I wand’red forth,
Along the banks of AiRE,
I spy’d a man, whose aged step
Seem’d weary, worn with care;
His face was a furrow’d o’wee with years,
And hairy was his Hair.”
Robert Burns
Man Was Made to Mourn, A Dirge
An old weary sailor laden with countless years, ashen hair, deep-lined face, and sad eyes sat in his favorite table at the Lobster Pot Pub on a chilly night in November. In the corner of the old sailor’s memory were images of the blackness on the sea, echoing in the channels of his mind, and vanishing into dark curling waves. He looked out a window and saw dim silver colored lights flickering through the rain-streaked windows of the pub where he was sadly wondering about the weight of his memories. He sat in this pub before, countless times, watching the unstoppable hours marching by, trying to reinterpret his nightmares. Months ago the swift gales of winter battered his old shack by the edge of the sea, disrupting the rhythm of his aging mind, drowning the meaning of things he still did not understand, like the dwindling pulses of his heart and imaginary voices calling to him in his briny ocean dreams. He stopped to think about the drama in which he was the main protagonist and saw his fleeting hours of aging drifting away in the ocean’s unruly tide. The thin line between life and death was crumpled in the salty gales, which spun into the wind as he watched white-hot lightening flashing in the distance. He tasted the sound of thunder in his mouth as the rain started to pelt the roof of the old pub. He watched gulls trying to fly amongst the gaps between raindrops, a scene, he had watched for many years. His skin felt the peculiar salty dampness of the ocean as the blackness on sea started to close in upon the night. He searched for reality in the stairways of his lost memories while struggling against the uneasy ache between inhaling and exhaling. He dreaded the briny voices of the lonely nights that beckoned to sailors with souls like his; their voices echoed across the room carrying throbbing hours that were vanishing away. He sensed something unnamed that quietly pulsed inside his weary mind, and tried to stifle the tears running down his cheeks as his final hours dwindled away into a corner of his memory. He murmured a line from Burns; “That man was made to mourn,” Then his last pint toppled on to the floor with a bang, followed by his weary body. The landlord Nick Mayturn rushed over, and with a tear in his eye held on to his old friend’s hand.
Comments