The Tempest’s Lament

The tempest howls a dirge of ancient spite,
Its frothing jaws agape to smite the night;
Each crashing crest, a tomb of liquid stone,
Each gust, the breath of gods to claim their own.
Yet still he stands, though mortal fears conspire,
His gaze aflame with undefeated fire—
For in his breast, a secret lies entombed,
A truth too long in shadow’s vault consumed.

“O Sea!” he cries, “thy fury I defy!
What mortal chain binds thee to rend the sky?
Is this the toll for sins I dared to sow,
Or fate’s cruel jest to drown the seeds I sow?”
No answer comes but salt and wind’s lament,
As timbers groan beneath the firmament.
Yet through the spray, a phantom form takes shape—
A woman’s voice, where waves and wailings escape.

Her visage, pale as moons that bleed through cloud,
Wears sorrow’s crown, and speaks his name aloud:
“Dear heart,” she sighs, “why linger in the fray,
When decades since I slipped from life’s bouquet?
You left me waiting by the orchard’s edge,
Where vows were sworn beneath the hawthorn hedge.
You sought renown in battles not your own,
And left my love to wither, cold, alone…”

The knight falls prone, his soul by grief undone,
For here stands she whose fate his flight had spun—
His bride, whose hands once wove their futures bright,
Now drowned in time’s unmerciful twilight.
“Forgive!” he begs, “my quest was but a lie,
A coward’s flight from truths I dared not ply.
I thought to carve my name in glory’s scroll,
Yet carved thy heart, and forfeited my soul.”

Her ghostly fingers brush his weathered cheek,
A touch like frost, where words no longer speak.
“The hourglass spills sand we cannot keep,
And love, once lost, finds no returning sleep.
You chased the echoes of a hollow fame,
While years, like thieves, devoured our shared flame.
Now gaze upon the wreck your choices wrought—
A life unmoored, a heart by anguish caught.”

The ship, as if to seal his stark remorse,
Now splits its ribs beneath the waves’ brute force.
The mast, a skeletal and splintered bone,
Descends to realms where sunlight dare not roam.
He clutches her, though shadows claim her form,
As oceans chant the anthem of the storm.
“I stay,” she mourns, “where time’s cold currents flow,
But you must face the dawn you fled below.”

His grasp meets naught but brine and crushing dark,
As centuries collapse to one final spark.
The sea, its vengeance sated, lays to rest,
And spills his corpse upon the morning’s breast.
There, on the shore where gulls scream epitaphs,
Lies rusted mail and salt-bleached parchment scraps—
A letter, penned in hands that shook with rue,
Confessing love he never dared renew.

The tides, in time, erase all trace of woe,
Save one lone locket, wedged in sands below.
Its hinge, though cracked, guards faces young and fair,
Two souls ensnared in time’s unyielding snare.
And still the tempest sings its mournful tune,
Of knights who court the storm, and truths too soon,
Of hearts that, yearning, trade their priceless worth
For phantoms of renown, and graves in earth.