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Rolling Home To You
Punching through the channel chop,
The cold salt spray clouds my eyes,
With all sail bent,in a rising Sou-Wester.
The great mast bends, creaking loud in the step.
While the windward stays sing old mermaid's songs
Take a reef, I’ll be damned for we're on the home leg,
And I’m rolling home to you.
Unseen in the tide, the cold black rock,
Punched through the oak boards, as old as the hills.
Pitching us all to ruin in the rising Sou-Wester.
Cold waters closing, swallowing our deck.
While The wind in the wavetops sings old mermaid's songs.
It's the reef and we're damned and that on the home leg.
Whilst rolling home to you.
Cold on the sea bed, scoured by the tide,
Old bones washing free of the sand.
White skull, dislodged, by the roaring Sou-Wester,
Bowls in the flood, free of the seawrack.
While distant a whale, sings the old mermaid's songs,
I'm now free of the reef and I'm on the home leg
And I’m rolling home to you.
A small boy on the sands, dwarfed by the surf.
Picks through the jetsam cast up on the strand.
Sea shells and sepia, jet, agate and jasper,
Cast on the beach by the nights long gale,
Finds a circle of bone with two worn teeth.
Which, disgusted, the father picks out of the pail,
That is filled with the treasures of youth,
Throws it over the wall of the church in the dunes,
And I’m finally home with you.
