The Ship

Lamps and lanterns glow with fragile grace
that seems amiss.
Pegged tight to warping boards they bounce
with chains that clank and clamour on dark beams.
Dank and dingy basement-like inside,
the heavy tables clamped to wood on wood,
stickied with grease from a thousand meals;
I have to peel skin from its top to step away.
Dark and thick with stench
the clatter of metal and scrape of boards and shrieks;
the noise as stifling as the heat.
Lungs fighting desperate for clean air,
instead the endless briny sea and heavy breath
hanging wet against my face
upon my tongue.
I long for stable earth beneath my feet,
the solid safety of dry mud and warmth of
living bark;
instead I stand upon its coffin, legs lurch with every step
and even lying down there’s no escaping the relentless duck and dive
of kiss chase with the sea.
I ache I burn for land for home;
eyes crave the sight of green, of hills,
non-moving, solid, over restless hummocked seas.
As scorching sun blisters paint on wood
my skin on shoulders pales and peels with salt and
my crying salty tears burn pathways on cracked cheeks.
And I cry for home.
Aboard this creaking demon I am trapped;
uneasy rider tossed on sickly swell.
Plummeted to depths, this grey and grisly prison
heaves us out to dizzied heights and down again.
A restless roller-coaster soaring miles above
rocky beds where darkness sleeps
and over green liquid we slip closer,
or further,
from home.