Spindrift

A poem from my anthology The Legend of the Mary Celeste and Other Poems
ISBN: 1-4116-5520-6http://www.lulu.com/content/174261


SPINDRIFT

Was that a church bell or a buoy’s toll?
Is that some leaves just rustling in the wind,
or naiads weeping by an ebbing shoal?
Mists of slumber arouse undisciplined
forms that eddy beyond some ship’s porthole:
Scenes appear, for the veils of time have thinned
and mingled among dream and memory,
to weave a vivid tapestry for me.

Back, back, I travel, to another day -
and a ship berthed at Ocean Terminal.
Flags flutter and a band begins to play.
Many people wave, all so jovial,
in spite of that sun so cool and moire.
The Queen Mary awaits. A magical
palace, the finest ship to grace the seas,
such splendour kept her passengers at ease.

The clamour of departure bustling on
the quay: That last minute hugging and kissing,
and teary handkerchiefs brandishing Bon
Voyage. Offshore, eager tugboats come hissing,
tooting, touting - such Lilliputian brawn.
A chasm yawns with the vessel dismissing
the shore. Listen to that chiming ship’s bell
while gulls wheel and mew a raucous farewell.

Brass telegraphs, burnished until they gleam,
echo through stokeholds and the engine rooms.
Burners, fiery mad, give some boilers steam
till flues pout their wrath in three noxious plumes.
A score-and-four turbines insanely scream
to make propellers spin. A foghorn booms,
reverberating in lower bass A . . .

RMS Queen Mary gets underway.
Cruising down the Solent we reach the Isle
of Wight where Pilot bids us a safe trip.
From Nab Tower we take an eighty-mile
Channel crossing to Cherbourg, France, and slip
between the concrete breakwaters in style,
and board passengers who laud this great ship.
The Queen comes about; boat drill has begun;
foghorns blast as we chase the setting sun.

Marine engineers scurry here and there
with valve wrenches in hand: Opening, closing;
lifting, lowering; heating, cooling . . . Care
is taken with each step, yet unimposing
to the pro. One hundred-or-more chores wear
handily with revolutions transposing
to knots. And no task bends to ridicule:
"Hey you down there - fill up the swimming pool!"

Near the Western Approaches, heaving seas
of grey doff feathered caps of white and green
to a sullen sky. A freshening breeze
whips wire rigging, enlivening the scene.
In the Port Garden Lounge, midst dwarf palm trees,
life comes easy aboard an ocean Queen:
But in shaft alley where the black gangs work,
men chip and paint to beautify bilge murk.

Brisk breezes bring brash vibrant sounds, a squall
frowns on our beam, white horses snort and rear
across the breaking swells. A relayed call
orders: "Unship stabilizers!" We veer
south a little, and though there’s some rainfall,
our passengers continue in good cheer.
The Great Circle is traced in pencilled plots,
west-by-northwest, approaching thirty knots.

Weather mellows under dawn’s cheery light
blending sky and sea into pleasing blues.
Soon voyagers play quoits on decks of white,
some choose to muse, or snooze, by ones or twos
in canvas chairs: Coddled from morn to night
is what one expects upon a sea cruise.
Affluence is pampered from breakfast chime
through the long day till well past dinnertime.

We welcome the pilot at Sandy Hook
and America closes in. White satin
cloaks the wintry shores in a picture book
scene. Islands draw near; Liberty and Staten,
Governors and Ellis, and oh! Look! Look!
The skylined panorama of Manhattan.
Here stand the wonders of The Empire State,
New World wonders that make this country great.

I gave my regards to Broadway, one might
remember me in Herald Square. Tell all
the cops on Forty-Second Street that night
I was never there! I was touring Wall
Street, just absorbing each Big Apple sight.
Liberty ends with the Queen Mary’s call
for tugs. "Slow Ahead . . . Steady as you go."
We reach the sea amid spindrift and snow.

The Narrows and Ambrose are left behind,
Manhattan is but a faraway dream.
And as that dark coast becomes undefined,
the liner twinkles a birthday cake gleam . . .
Envision a floating haven in mind,
an idyllic world warmed by the Gulf Stream,
where holystoned decks lure everyone
to bask and soak up the tropical sun

Imagine an expanse of liquid blue,
beyond the stern, etched by a single vee:
Churning, churning, churning another hue,
cream-whorled green, as far as the eye can see.
Imagine warm nights where the stars you view
could be touched by romance and soon-to-be
lovers. But far beneath where lovers dream
oilfired hells produce superheated steam . . .

But who cares when moonbeams surf the dark waves
below shadowed davits where lovers meet?
Who cares as some lowly engineer slaves
in noise, in oil, in stinking steamy heat,
deep in the bowels of a Queen and craves
for a cold beer? That continual beat-
beat rhythmically thrums to those up there
that engineers on watch really do care.

Protected by radar, the blind man's dog,
ghostly shapes slip by with soft swishing sighs.
RMS Queen Mary gropes through thick fog
under the mask of night. Southampton lies
just ten miles away, according to the log.
Here and there shipboard friends say their goodbyes . . .
Two thousand leagues I have sailed this past night
to dream morning away in broad daylight!

Grand old ship moored in a landlocked lagoon,
her boilers gone, her engines lacking thrust.
Here, topside, where her twinkling lights festoon
her masts, and lifeboats, she seems quite robust.
I can recall times and another moon
when this old girl wasn’t dwindling to rust.
But whom do I cry for dear Lady, me
or you, or youth lost on the timeless sea?

July 2001