The Mariner’s Last Vigil

“O, cruel abyss!” he cried, his voice a shard
That split the tempest’s throat of thunderous breath,
“What pact have I transgressed, what heaven’s guard
Condemns my soul to choose ‘twixt love and death?”
No answer roared but waves that clawed the stone,
Their frothing tongues hissing of ventures lost,
Of husbands, sons, and dreams the deep had sown
In crypts of coral, paid the ocean’s cost.

Yet ‘midst the brine, a beacon pulsed afar—
A cottage lamp, though dimmed by war’s black hand,
Where *she* awaited, ‘neath the vesper star,
Her heart a compass pointing to no land.
Two moons had passed since cannons scarred the dawn,
Since conscripts marched to drums of steel and dread;
He’d pledged return, though fate’s bleak die were drawn,
And kissed her brow, now etched where tears were shed.

But battle’s dice had rolled a harrowed sum:
His vessel, maimed, adrift on mercy’s ebb,
Survived the siege—yet whispers chilled him numb:
“*The plague now grips the shore where waits your web.*”
No blade had felled him ‘midst the cannon’s choir,
No ball had claimed his breath in glory’s flame,
But love, that tyrant, stoked a fiercer pyre—
To brave the storm, or let her die in shame?

The cliff’s edge crumbled ‘neath his boot’s resolve
As westward plunged, a gull through screaming gales,
To wrest a skiff from waves that sought to dissolve
All traces of his quest in liquid jails.
The ocean snarled, a wolf with salted mane,
Its teeth of rock, its throat a whirlpool’s tomb,
Yet every oar he drew, though strained with pain,
Carved prayers to gods he dared not name in gloom.

“Stay not my hand, O Leviathan of night!”
He roared, the tiller trembling in his grip,
“Nor claim her soul ‘til I have lost this fight—
Let not her light be swallowed by your ship!”
The tempest laughed, a sound like mastworks breaking,
And hurled the boat toward skies inverted, black,
Where lightning etched her face in forks of aching—
Her smile, her tears, the vow he’d sworn turned wrack.

Three days he fought, three nights no stars could chart,
His lips cracked hymns to hope long turned to ghost,
While fever’s claws, with poison’s cruel art,
Painted her visage on the waves’ wild host.
“I come, my rose,” he’d rasp to phantom shores,
“Though Hell’s own hounds besiege this splintered wood—”
Then, lo! A glint—a spire!—where breakers roared,
The cove of home, where life and longing stood.

Yet as the skiff, a leaf in chaos’ fist,
Skirted the reef’s black fangs with gasping breath,
A child’s wail pierced the din—a mournful tryst
Of sound that froze his veins as cold as death.
Upon the rocks, a maid of seven years
Clung to a spar, her eyes twin pools of fright,
Her hair a net of gold the storm would shear,
Her fate a thread stretched taut ‘twixt sea and night.

No pause, no thought—his oars in chaos flung,
He dove where jaws of surf devoured the frail,
His arms, though leaden, round her form he wrung,
While cliffs applauded with their thunderous hail.
One gasp, one kick—he breached the surface void,
The child couched safe upon his heaving chest,
But lo! The skiff, by currents now deployed,
Drifted to depths where shadows claim their quest.

No cry he spared, no curse to Fate’s blind game,
But swam as titans clashed above his head,
Each stroke a dirge, each breath her whispered name,
Until the shore’s cold kiss met his boots’ tread.
The villagers, who watched with bated sighs,
Lifted the child from arms that shook yet held,
While he, half-dead, with sunken, firelit eyes,
Staggered where lanterns through the deluge swelled.

Her door emerged—a mirage through the rain,
Its wood once carved with vows now slick with brine;
He fell, then crawled, his strength a waning vein,
To trace the threshold where her world met mine.
“Open, my heart!” he pled, a rasping sound—
The panel yielded to a gasp, a cry,
And there she stood, though pallor-cloaked and crowned
With sweat’s bleak gems, yet lovelier than the sky.

No words—their souls entwined in silent speech,
Her hand, though trembling, brushed his salt-streaked cheek,
A touch that galaxies could never reach,
That made the tempest’s wrath seem frail and meek.
But hark—a cough wracked through her fragile frame,
A scarlet bloom stained linen ‘gainst her breast;
The plague’s dark mark, no healer could reclaim,
Had feasted deep, denied her pleading rest.

“You came,” she breathed, her voice a lyre’s last chord,
“As promised, though the heavens barred the way…”
He clasped her close, though doom his heart had gored,
“And would again, though seas and death hold sway.”
They sank together, limbs and tears entwined,
Upon the floor where love had first been sworn,
Her breath a fragile zephyr, his the wind
That mourned the theft of dawn yet yet unborn.

Outside, the storm, as if in reverence, died,
Leaving a world washed clean in moonlight’s grace;
Two forms lay still, where sorrow’s wings spread wide—
Her face, a portrait peace; his, love’s embrace.
The child lived, her laughter future’s hymn,
Yet oft she’d kneel where waves kissed stone and shell,
And leave twin blooms—one white, one twilight-dim—
Where valor’s heart and love’s last vow once fell.

Thus ends the tale the sea still hums at dusk,
When tides retreat like ghosts from war’s grim stage,
Of how a soul, though battered, blind, and brusque,
Outraced the storm to script one final page.
No dirge resounds where cliffs guard lovers’ sleep,
But in the brine, two whispers ever blend:
The surf’s low throb, the watch no kin could keep—
A mariner’s vigil, endless, with no end.