The Mariner’s Last Vow
A vessel, frail as withered leaves, contends the ravening night—
Her masts, like broken promises, now bow to tempests’ law,
And every groan her timbers weep is answered by the maw
Of waves that rise like cathedrals, crowned with frothing scorn,
To claim the oath he swore ashore, the pledge of safe return.
He stands—this traveler of shadows, salt-scarred and tempest-torn—
His hands, twin ghosts upon the wheel, by decades of resolve outworn.
The sea, a lover turned to foe, inhales his labored breath,
And in her throat of sapphire depths, he hears the dirge of death:
*“What man may bind the whirlwind? What flesh dare chain the tide?
Your vow, a thread of spider’s silk, by destiny denied.”*
Yet still he fights, this splintered soul, though hope’s last ember dies,
For in the vault of memory’s keep, a face beneath calm skies—
A voice that lingered, soft as mist, when first he fled the shore:
*“Return before the autumn’s end, or seek me nevermore.”*
Her eyes, twin pools of twilight, had brimmed with unshed tears,
A silent plea to quell the sea, to conquer storm and years.
But seasons, like the gulls, had fled on wings of fickle wind,
And left him tangled in the mesh of voyages unkinned.
Each port a cage of echoes, each horizon a lie,
Till freedom’s price—the weight of waves—became a starless sky.
Now here, where Leviathan’s pulse drums through the vessel’s bones,
He wrestles not the sea alone, but all he might’ve known.
The gale, with fingers forged of ice, unstitches sail from spar,
And flings the remnants to the void where shattered comets are.
The deck, a stage for chaos, heaves beneath his bleeding feet,
As shadows, thick as prophecy, the helm’s last vow repeat:
*“No man may drink the ocean’s wrath and live to name it sweet—
The sea retains what she desires, and you she claims, complete.”*
A crack! The hull, a splintered heart, admits the ravenous foam,
And in that breach, the traveler sees his final port—the home
He’d bartered for the siren-song of unbound wanderlust.
Her name, a half-remembered psalm, dissolves in salt and rust.
The mast, a crucifix of wood, now carves the drowning air,
As waves, like wolves, ascend to claim the offering laid bare.
He clasps a locket, cold as grace, where miniatures reside—
Two faces blurred by time’s caress, yet anchored side by side.
*“Forgive,”* he breathes, though words are drowned by thunder’s vast decree,
*“The oath was but a lantern’s glow… the dark demanded me.”*
The locket plummets, silver chain unspooled by fate’s cruel hand,
To sink where light, a stranger’s ghost, may never kiss the sand.
The sea, appeased, withdraws her claws, her fury spent in full,
And dawn, a timid penitent, spills gold on waters dull.
No trace remains but froth and wind, no dirge but gulls’ low cries—
The mariner, his ship, his vow, now seabed sanctifies.
Far off, a woman shades her eyes, yet scans no more the cove,
Her vigil, like the fractured oath, dissolved to salted love.
Thus freedom’s paradox is writ in brine and shattered beams:
The boundless soul, who spurned the shore, now fathoms what it means—
That chains of wave and chains of earth alike confine the breast,
And truest liberty resides… in hearts that choose their rest.
But he, who sought the infinite, now cradled in the deep,
Learns eternity’s a weight no mortal vow may keep.
