The Mariner’s Last Canto
Where tempests carved their wrath in frothing trails,
A lone soul tread the deck, his heart a fray
Of hope and shadows, battered by the gales.
No name he bore but “Traveler”—a wraith
Whose past lay drowned in fathoms none could sound,
His eyes two lanterns dimmed by endless faith
That somewhere past the storm, calm seas were found.
The vessel groaned, a beast of splintered spine,
Its sails like phantoms flapping in the gloom,
Each wave a claw that sought to undermine
The fragile pact between man and doom.
Salt-scarred and gaunt, he gripped the helm with hands
That knew more of the abyss than of land,
While whispers rose from dark, unspoken sands:
*”What price would you pay to cheat the ocean’s hand?”*
Three nights he fought the maelstrom’s lunging throat,
Three nights the stars withdrew their timid light,
Till on the fourth, a spectral schooner wrote
Its silhouette in lightning’s jagged white.
A ghostly craft, its timbers bleached by years
Of sailing realms where mortal breath grows thin,
Its rigging taut with chords of frozen tears,
And at its prow—a figure, pale as sin.
“Who braves the Bride of Storms?” the specter called,
Voice woven through with winds of northern graves,
“Your flesh is but a leaf, soon to be mauled
By waves that spare no knight, no king, no slaves.”
The Traveler stood, his resolve a blade
Unsheathed: “I seek a path the gales have sealed.
What toll must life or memory evade
To cross this wrath and reach the tranquil field?”
The phantom laughed, a sound like rigging snapped,
“All mortals kneel where sky and surge conspire.
Yet one may pass… if one alone is trapped
To bear the storm’s eternal, cold desire.
A soul must stay, entwined with depths below,
To still the tempest’s hunger with its breath.
Choose swiftly—will you face the undertow,
Or let your crewmate meet this living death?”
No crew had he but shadows of regret,
Yet from the hold emerged a face he knew—
A brother lost to time, eyes dimmed and wet,
Whose voice he’d mourned in ports he’d wandered through.
“Illusion!” cried the Traveler, “Vile test!
Why conjure phantoms from a buried ache?”
The specter hissed, “The sea devours the best.
To save one ghost, another soul must break.”
The brother’s gaze, a mirror of his own,
Pierced through the veils of pride and stoic guise.
“No,” murmured he, “I’ll not leave you alone
To bear the chains of mercy’s grim device.”
But as he spoke, the storm surged, rabid-eyed,
The ship near swallowed by a roaring crest.
The Traveler roared, “Let me be sanctified!
Strip from my bones the pulse the sea would wrest!”
A pact was struck. The phantom’s hand, ice-boned,
Pressed to his chest—a brand no light could heal.
“Your breath shall be the anchor tempests hone,
Your voice the hymn that tames the squall’s appeal.
But mark this well: when dawn’s first blush ascends,
Your flesh will merge with brine, your sight with mist,
A sentinel until the ocean ends,
Forgotten by the ones your vow has kissed.”
The ghost-ship faded, sated by the trade,
The waves grew tame as hounds beneath a throne.
Alone, he watched the horizon’s jade
Embrace the sun he’d never call his own.
His brother’s face, now freed from sorrow’s script,
Mouthed silent thanks as winds bore him from view,
While in his veins, the chill of contract crept,
And salt crystallized where tears once broke through.
Years melted—decades—centuries, perhaps—
His form became a legend etched in foam,
A lighthouse for the lost, though no maps
Recorded where he wept, nor called him home.
Sailors would speak, in tones of fraying thread,
Of whispers guiding ships through lethal swells,
A voice that sang when all but doom seemed dead,
A shape that lingered where the water fell.
Yet on still nights, when moons hung low and vast,
He’d glimpse the brother saved by his decree,
Now old, then dust, while he remained steadfast,
A stone amid Time’s unrelenting sea.
No grave would cradle him, no dirge be sung,
No hand to etch his name on splintered wood.
The pact demanded he remain unsung,
His sacrifice misunderstood for good.
And when at last the oceans ceased their churn,
When stars dissolved and cliffs crumbled to sand,
A final sigh escaped him—cold, taciturn—
As both the sea and sentinel disbanded.
No soul remained to tell how love’s sharp blade
Had carved a sanctuary from despair,
How one man’s choice to bear the endless shade
Had turned the key on life’s unyielding snare.
Thus ends the canto of the nameless tide,
A hymn to those who choose the deeper pain,
Whose silent vows through eternity abide,
Their hearts both wreckage and the storm’s refrain.
Remember, when you sail through tranquil blue,
The price some paid to carve your path in waves—
Not all who wander perish without clue,
But some become the mercy that the brave engrave.
“`
