The Seafarer’s Mythical Pathos

The Seafarer’s Mythical Pathos

A rippling pool of murmuring surrender
leaving a violent and chaotic life
razor shells to a paradise end
offering a peaceful, watery coffin;
laceration lullabies of resurrection
bubbling up, so the ocean will give
an unexplored life in uncharted passages
an answer to her lost courage and will to live...

She descended into a liquid universe
of the flowered jetsam of an emotional darkness
into the blackest, bleakest coldest depths
when a chance wooden ship appeared to rest
with men awe-struck by the mythical pathos...

Astonished, then taken sailors, they,
though salted long and gapeing teeth
as they beheld the fairest sight to see-
a dreamed-of heaven from a hellish sea
hovering several fathoms astern...
They rang the bells, jabbed the jibs
hoisted the lanyards with nets unfurled
and pulled their sublime prize aboard
and claimed her as their collective own...

They took turns giving her mouth-to-mouth
and she came ‘round, to a delirious shout
from the smiling, laughing, rotting gums
whose teary eyes and bloodshot smiles

gazed on the sight of this glimmering gift
from heaven, as they deemed she had journeyed from...

They gave her bread, almost maggot free
and an old cask of wine to wash down the sea
and robed her in white with their finest adornments
and laid her in their cabin lea...

They fed her the first of every meal-
fish scrapple most days of the week
and at every paradise island stop
she was showered with mangoes and coconut tops
and fresh bananas when they could be found
she was pleased, and pleased all who came 'round...

They listened in rapture in long, late evenings
to her far-away poetry, where men of the sea
rescued sea goddesses and sirens fair
drowning in anguish of their own despair
saved by simple, hearty lots
(and this part always received a cheer)
no better or worse than the sailors they were
who cherished their claim, and showered her
with all that their love-starved hearts could give...

Such a purpose found for this rescued maiden

carved into the bow of her adopted ship
ships laden with legends of seafarers old
and their wondrous catches from the bountiful ocean’s cold
and coldest darkest depths

rescuing mythical pathos' beauty's breath

still pretty much pretty, with the wind at her back...