The Orphan’s Tide
Where tempests carve their wrath on cliffs of splintered stone,
There dwelt a youth whose days were woven thick with guile,
An orphaned soul who walked his mournful path alone.
No hearth nor kin had he to warm his twilight hours,
Yet in his breast there burned a question, fierce and deep—
A longing to unearth the source of ancient powers
That bound his lineage to the waves’ unending weep.
“Old Mariner,” he cried one eve, as gulls took flight,
Their wings like shattered vows against the bleeding west,
“What truth lies buried in the caverns of the night?
What specter grips my roots within this ceaseless quest?”
The ancient sailor, bowed by time’s unkind decree,
Turned eyes like frosted glass toward the boy’s unrest.
“Beware the siren call of what you dare to see—
Some tides, once stirred, will drown the shore they long caressed.”
But still the boy persisted, gaunt with fervent need,
His fingers tracing maps on tables salt-embossed.
“I’ll brave the storm’s black maw, the reef’s devouring greed,
To learn what phantom ship consigned my blood to frost!”
The Mariner, in silence, gripped his oaken chair,
As memories, like shadows, crossed his weathered face.
“Then go,” he whispered, “chart the depths of your despair—
But mark, when truth’s gale blows, none find a sheltered place.”
At dawn, the youth embarked, a skiff his trembling shrine,
While far above, the cliffs wept ivy’s bitter tears.
The Mariner stood watch, his heart a tangled line,
As winds, like ghostly hounds, bayed of impending fears.
Through waves that reared like dragons, thrashing iron scales,
The orphan pressed, his oars against the brine’s revolt,
Till, mid the maelstrom’s roar, he glimpsed through veiled gales
A mast, colossal, grim—his answer’s dark exult.
There, lodged ‘twixt jaws of rock, a galleon’s corpse lay bare,
Its hull a gape of ribs, its sails the phantoms’ shroud.
With breath as thin as mist, he climbed the splintered stair,
Where seaweed clasped the helm like some funereal crowd.
Within the captain’s crypt, a logbook, sallow-skinned,
Revealed in crabbed script the tale he’d sought to flee—
How, decades past, a storm, by treachery designed,
Had dashed his parents’ craft against this selfsame lee.
“By greed ensnared,” he read, “our first mate sealed our fate,
Heaved cargo to the surge to hoard the golden claim.
Yet justice, swift and cold, pursued his heart of hate—
His corpse now feeds the lamprey, churned in shame’s acclaim.”
The orphan’s hands grew numb, the pages fell like snow,
As understanding’s blade pierced through his tender core.
No noble quest had led their vessel here below,
But venal hearts and thirst for wealth’s unending war.
Then, as he knelt, the ship let loose a spectral groan,
A chorus of the lost, condemned to endless wake.
The timbers groaned their dirge, the boy’s blood turned to stone,
As shadows, thick as tar, began to writhe and quake.
“You’ve come,” a voice intoned, “to join the cursed refrain,
For truth, once known, becomes a chain no soul unbinds.”
The orphan screamed, but waves devoured his refrain,
And pulled him to the breast where every seeker finds.
Back on the cliff, the Mariner, with hollow gaze,
Watched thunderheads consume the spot where hope had fled.
He’d known, since first the boy had met his father’s face
In dreams, what end awaited when the past was read.
No tomb would mark the child’s exit from the earth,
No ballad sing his name—the sea’s embrace is sure.
Yet still, each night, the old man measures sorrow’s worth,
And hears, in every surge, the truth no heart can cure.
So ends the seeker’s tale, where foam and anguish blend,
A testament writ not in ink, but salt and spray.
For those who pry the lid from secrets without end,
Shall find the weight of knowledge bears a tidal sway.
Let others heed the moral etched in ocean’s script—
Some depths, once plumbed, decree the plummet of the soul.
The orphan’s truth, now cradled where the drowned ships dip,
Is but another pearl in sorrow’s endless shoal.
