The Ship Club

I am taking inventory at my kitchen table
of footprints and blisters I have made
the stuff that shoots satellites from the sky

I write about the yacht club where I
worked to quench my thirst
poured wine, dusted silver trophies and portraits
of dead sailors with boot-leather brows
ploughed by salt winds
The living kept me in drinks
though light fingers thought
never quite enough

And you, Sir, who always bought me gin
are now a widower. I remember vintage port
colouring her chemo skin. After she died
I read in the papers, you took to the seas

I have nearly finished writing
yet won’t repay what I robbed
My pride is a torn burgee
from a yacht lost at Dunkirk.