The Mariner’s Lament in the Whispering Wood

No chart could name this cove of clawing shadows
Where sea-gnawed cliffs birthed forests in their wrath –
Pine sentinels with bark like ancient gallows,
Roots drinking darkness from the ocean’s path.

Through froth that hissed like widows’ lost confessions,
He dragged his bones ashore on faith’s last thread,
While somewhere in that primordial procession
Of trees, a hollow voice whispered “Come, be fed.”

Dawn came not as gold but as ashen fingers
Tracing the scars on oak trunks’ weathered faces,
Each branch a mast from which no banner lingers,
Each leaf a sail reefed tight by dread’s embraces.

Three days he wandered where no bird dared wing,
His tongue grown thick with thirst’s metallic kiss,
Till through the pines’ eternal murmuring
Rose smoke that coiled like memory’s serpent-hiss.

A cottage crouched where light and shadow warred,
Its timbers bent as some great burden bore,
With windows staring where no candle roared
But darkness pulsed like tide ‘gainst cavern floor.

“Ho, shelter!” croaked the mariner’s parched throat,
Yet as his knuckles met worm-eaten wood,
The door swung wide on hinges that wrote
A scream into the still air where he stood.

Within, the hearth glowed cold with foxfire’s gleam,
Illuminating tapestries of dust,
A table set for two where pallid steam
Curled from a tureen wrought of verdigris crust.

“Partake,” sighed walls that breathed with mold’s embrace,
“Restore thy strength, O child of roving waves.”
His hands, though trembling, lifted ladle’s grace –
Black broth swirled secrets from unmarked graves.

As first drop touched his lips, the world dissolved
To mist where shadows danced their pagan rite,
And through the haze a figure slowly evolved,
Her hair a storm, her eyes drowned sailors’ night.

“Long have I waited, keeper of this shore,
To taste the salt that lingers in your veins,”
Her voice the tolling of some sunken door,
“Each wanderer brings solace to my chains.”

He staggered back, the spoon now poison’s blade,
“Phantom or demon, what foul feast is this?”
“Merely,” she smiled, “a hostess’ debt repaid –
You drank my past, now let me drink your bliss.”

Through cracked-lipped tales spun over spectral wine,
Her tragedy unfolded like tide’s scroll –
A lighthouse keeper’s daughter, left to pine
When love’s ship foundered on ambition’s shoal.

“Father would scan the waves’ relentless chewing,
While I kept vigil with the guttering flame,
Till one storm-lashed night, through the tempest’s spewing,
Your eyes met mine across the lightning’s frame.”

The mariner’s heart froze mid-beat, then raced
As recognition dawned like guilty dawn –
That long-dead night when duty he’d erased,
Choosing the sea’s embrace o’er love’s sweet pawn.

“Miriam?” trembled from his salt-cracked lips,
Her name a ghostship through the fog of years.
“The same,” she whispered, fingertips to hips
Now translucent as the sea’s cold tears.

“Why build this prison from our broken vow?”
“Each desertion’s stone built up my tomb,
Till land and sea divorced, and bough by bough
These trees grew tall to cage my endless gloom.”

Outside, the pines creaked like masts in squall,
Their roots beneath the floorboards snaked and hissed,
“Stay, and let the wood become your hall,
Where time forgets, and mortal pains are kissed.”

For seven nights they danced this macabre waltz –
She offering eternal twilight’s peace,
He yearning for the sea despite its faults,
Her spectral grip on his soul’s lease increase.

Till on the eighth morn, through the forest’s sighing,
A gull’s lost cry pierced through the stagnant air,
Its wings like hope’s last banner bravely flying,
It stirred the mariner from despair’s lair.

“I cannot trade the storm’s authentic kiss
For this pale imitation of life’s breath,”
He cried, though every fiber fought to miss
The sea’s cruel arms that courted sailors’ death.

Her shriek uprooted ferns and shook down years
Of rotting leaves that fell like mottled skin,
“Then join your brethren who ignored my tears –
Their bones now fertilize my garden’s sin!”

The cottage walls dissolved to grasping briar,
The floorboards split to roots that clutched and tore,
As all the wood converged in vengeful ire
To claim another soul to its dark store.

He ran as pines bent down to block his path,
Their needles slicing at his weathered face,
While Miriam’s wails distilled to aftermath –
Love curdled into hatred’s cold embrace.

At cliff’s sheer edge where sea and forest met,
He paused, the gale’s fingers in his hair,
Behind, the wood’s dark jaws in silhouette,
Before, the waves that sang of vast despair.

One heartbeat spanned the void ‘twixt shore and foam,
His body arched in perfect final dive,
No epitaph but seabirds’ mournful poem,
No grave but depths where lost hopes still survive.

And in the wood, a new oak’s gnarled face
Erupted where his foot had last touched earth,
Its branches straining seaward to replace
The love she’d drowned in vengeance’s rebirth.

Now sailors lost in tempest’s random spite
Report through rum’s haze and fear’s wild tales
Of forest shadows dancing in moonlight
With one oak stretching farthest, its bark pale

As salt-bleached bones, its leaves like whispered pleas
That drift on tides which never cease their churning –
Monument to choices made at seas
Where love and freedom war through endless burning.

So souls adrift between two vast despairs
May find no harbor but the crushing wave,
Their memories etched in maritime airs
And forests built from hearts too brave to save.