The Mariner’s Last Voyage: A Tempest of Sacrifice
Where gales did carve their wrath in frothing scorn,
A ship, once proud, now splintered by the deep,
Lay cradled in the claws of waves that weep.
Her masts, like broken bones, did pierce the night,
And sails, ghost-shreds, flapped pale in phantom light.
There stood a man, salt-scarred and tempest-born,
Whose eyes held tides no compass could adorn—
A mariner, whose soul the sea had claimed,
Yet burned with embers love’s faint breath had named.
“Elara!” cried his voice, a rasping hymn,
Drowned by the storm’s cacophonous grim.
*Her name*, the wind seemed hissing through the shrouds,
A mockery of memory in the clouds.
He saw her then, not flesh, but shadow’s trace—
A lace of starlight on a mortal face,
Her laughter woven through the loom of years,
Now drowned beneath the thunder’s liquid spears.
Three nights prior, the brine had whispered low,
A siren’s lie, a chartless undertow.
The crew, once bold, now knelt to Neptune’s rage,
Their prayers devoured by the ocean’s maw.
“To jettison the cargo!” roared the mate,
“Or sink we shall beneath this cursed weight!”
But in the hold, not spice nor gold lay stored,
But crates of seeds—her dream, his oath, his word.
“To plant a grove where wastelands choke the sun,”
She’d pleaded, ere the voyage had begun.
“These saplings hold the future’s fragile breath—
Promise me they’ll bloom, though it cost your death.”
The storm’s fist clenched. The hull groaned, timber-split.
Salt-fangs gnawed chains, the anchor’s grip unlit.
The mariner, lashed fast to the wheel’s spine,
Felt time unravel, thread by thread, line by line.
A choice: to cast her hope into the void,
Or let the waves claim all—ship, soul, employed.
He closed his eyes. Her touch, a phantom brand,
Seared through the ice of death’s approaching hand.
“Strike down the mast!” he roared above the din,
“Use planks to build a raft—we’ll float within!”
The crew, half-mad with fear, obeyed his cry,
While lightning stitched the chaos in the sky.
Dawn came not with mercy, but darker hues,
As blackened waves donned crowns of venomous blues.
The raft, a leaf in Fate’s capricious palm,
Held six souls shivering, clutching mortal calm.
But lo—the mariner stayed bound to wreck,
His fingers locked where wood met iron’s wreck.
“Why cling to death?” a deckhand screamed, near drowned,
“Your bride awaits—yet here you stay, chain-crowned!”
The mariner but smiled, a bitter twist,
And shook his head through lips the storm had kissed:
“The raft will bear but five—no more, no less.
Six souls aboard would court the sea’s duress.”
They stared, then wept—for in his steadfast gaze,
They glimpsed the love that lit his final days.
“Take these,” he murmured, tossing sealed commands—
A map, a ring, words writ by trembling hands.
“Tell her the grove shall rise where deserts weep,
And bid her plant my memory where she reaps.”
The raft fled south, as northward, wave on wave,
The ship succumbed to its liquid grave.
The mariner, lashed to his chosen pyre,
Sang ancient chants as brine quenched reason’s fire.
His last sight—not of her, but seedlings bright,
Bobbed briefly, then were swallowed by the night.
***
Now on a cliff where gulls carve mournful arcs,
A woman waits, her gaze on spectral barques.
No saplings rise; no grove greens sorrow’s vale—
The raft, found empty, told a fractured tale.
Yet in her palms, a salt-crust scroll still lies,
Its ink blurred by the sea’s unending sighs:
“Beloved, weep not for this vessel’s fall,
Nor let the thorns of grief your heart impale.
The seeds were but the shell; the truth, now sown—
Your face was all I bore, my north, my own.
The waves that claim me whisper your dear name—
In death, I guard the love no storm can maim.”
She reads, and reads, till dusk bleeds into star,
And hears the sea’s reply, both near and far—
A roar that is not rage, but raw, unblessed,
The mariner’s dirge, from ocean’s vaulted chest.
No tomb but twilight’s ever-shifting shroud,
No epitaph but this: he loved aloud.
***
Centuries pass. The cliff still braves the spray,
And locals speak of ghosts at break of day—
A man, barnacled, scans the shore with eyes
That mirror tempests and ten-thousand sighs.
They say he seeks a woman long since dust,
Whose tears once salted vows now lost to rust.
But in the town, where children chase the tide,
An ancient oak grove sways, roots deep and wide.
No mortal hand, they say, planted this wood—
It sprang full-formed where widow’s ashes stood.
Its leaves, when stirred, sing hymns of parted ways,
Of love that sails beyond the mortal maze.
And some swear, when the storm clouds choke the moon,
Two voices weave through rain’s discordant tune:
A man’s low timbre, firm through crashing foam,
A woman’s laugh, that turns the ocean home.
But skeptics smile—”Just waves on weathered stone,”
And miss the truth that only hearts made lone
Can hear: the mariner’s unyielding vow,
Now evergreen in bough and broken prow.
For love, when given as the sea gives rain,
Returns not—yet becomes the world’s own chain,
Binding lost shores in symphonies of pain,
Where loss and triumph, drowned, are both the same.
