The Ballad of Salt and Sorrow
A vagrant lyrist cloaked in tattered gray,
Where waves, like wolves, devoured beam and wood,
And winds carved dirges from the cliffs’ decay.
His fingers, gnarled as roots of ancient yew,
Clutched close a lute whose strings no laughter knew,
Its voice a whisper of some spectral tune
That mourned the sun’s divorce from storm-chased noon.
“O sea,” he cried, “thou ravenous, unkind!
What pact have I transgressed, what sacred vow,
That thou dost rend the fabric of my mind
And crown my brow with brine instead of bough?”
No answer came but thunder’s fractured groan,
As shadows danced upon his flesh like stone,
Yet in his breast, a memory took flame—
A face, a vow, a love he dare not name.
Three winters past, when spring’s first blush lay slain
By frost’s sharp teeth, he’d knelt on kinder shores,
Where violets wept and willows wove a chain
To bind two hearts where Time himself implores.
“Though tides may rise and stars forget their spheres,”
He’d sworn, “no storm shall steal thee from my years.
This lute, my soul, shall guard thy tender breath
E’en when the sea herself lies cold in death.”
But she, whose lips outshone the rubied west,
Whose laughter turned the twilight into morn,
Now slept where poppies cloak the quiet breast
Of earth—her melody to silence borne.
One scarlet dusk, as seabirds traced their arcs,
A fever’s kiss had stilled her vital sparks,
And he, who’d vowed to shield her from all harms,
Could naught but cradle death within his arms.
Yet still he roamed, each year, when autumn’s hand
Painted the oaks in hues of rusted blood,
To kneel where wild thyme kissed the salted sand
And play the songs she’d loved beneath the flood
Of moonglow—till this night, when tempests roared
To bar his path with waves like vengeance stored.
“I’ll keep my oath!” he howled to skies undone,
“Or let thy depths proclaim what thou hast won!”
The gale replied with claws of froth and spite,
Tearing his cloak, his lute, his last resolve.
Each step he took, the rocks, like fangs of night,
Bit deep, and tides around his ankles swolved.
“Aye, drown me then!” he wept, “but let one strain
Reach where she dreams beyond all mortal pain!”
One trembling chord he struck—a sound so pure
It split the storm’s dark heart—then, no more.
The sea inhaled. The world held still, breath-bound,
As notes like liquid silver pierced the cloud,
A serenade to where no grief is found,
Each tone a lily on a phantom shroud.
For in that chord, all loves and losses met—
The unkissed dawns, the vows we can’t forget—
Till crashing waves, envious of the air,
Leapt forth to steal the song he’d fashioned there.
Down, down he sank, his lute still clasped in fight,
Its final sigh a bubble’s fleeting hymn.
The sea, appeased, withdrew her claws of night,
And stars returned, their faces cold and grim.
Far off, a shape emerged from foam and spray—
A woman formed of moonlight’s milky way,
Who gathered close the lute’s last fading note
And pressed it to her breast, a throbbing mote.
Now sailors, when the northern gales grow bold,
Speak low of chords that surge through midnight’s veil,
Of tides that weave a requiem for the old,
And one lone ghost who braves the endless gale.
They say he serenades the drowned, the dear,
His lute-strings spun from ice and mortal fear,
While she, his lost, in coral chambers deep,
Guards music not even the waves may keep.
