Image: Bulloch Harbour, Dublin, by Lisa Fecker (via Unsplash).
The mid-section of Rapids, my upcoming poetry collection (due out in the new year), is entitled ‘Sea Batteries’ was a loose collection of maritime-related poems. I wrote as many as a hundred such pieces, but alas, some had to be cut out from the final draft, as is often the case. Still, I’m glad I can give it a home here, and I hope you enjoy.
"Nevertheless, without going into the minutiae of the business, the eloquent fact remained that the sea was there in all its glory and in the natural course of things somebody or other had to sail on it and fly in the face of providence though it merely went to show how people usually contrived to load that sort of onus on to the other fellow like the hell idea and the lottery and insurance, which were run on identically the same lines so that for that very reason, if no other, lifeboat Sunday was a very laudable institution to which the public at large, no matter where living, inland or seaside,-is the case might be, having it brought home to them like that, should extend its gratitude also to the harbour-masters and coastguard service who had to man the rigging and push off and out amid the elements, whatever the season, when duty called Ireland expects that every man and so on, and sometimes had a terrible time of it in the wintertime not forgetting the Irish lights, Kish and others, liable to capsize at any moment rounding which he once with his daughter had experienced some remarkably choppy, not to say stormy, weather."
James Joyce, Ulysses, Eumaeus chapter
Landfalling
Now that you are making landfall,
remember to sniff
the teasing air, press your fingers
into the clammy sand.
Know that you are home at last,
the tide dispelling leeward like a ghost,
clear and calm, tired and cold.
You lean on the rail, rocking with the ship,
and make sure the bowline
is uncoiled for docking. No gannets
to signal your arrival, the quay
lies open for you, its stony arms’ familiar
slant stirring long-awaited relief
in your bones. Ships, water, prolonged voyaging -
these are no longer your concern.
Hear the keel crunching into silt,
growl of surf as you wade inland
powerless to take the long wait anymore.
Go along with the tired trawlers clustered
at their berths, the port’s oily waste,
the frenzy of dockside photos
and congratulatory pints, the tears thankful
for your safe return after months at sea,
the shore life you dreaded returning to
greeting you without any real ceremony.
Had you slept through the moment
and your crewmates had to carry you ashore,
you couldn’t appreciate any of this.
The sea will roll on without you
as it always will, meek now
as some closed logbook, past everything,
unmoored of disquiet.
The current still gropes its way in and out.
For all its excitement and brimful
of wonder, your story is a mere fleck of sand
tossed in a flurry of wind,
your biography scribbled in salt-water tracts.
Yet, even as you make fast to the pier,
fit to her fenders as you draw her
steadily in, you know you have not gone
deaf to the murmuring from the bottom
of the sea that had always lured
your far-sickness back to the wind.
The ever-young light, lumped in your throat
like a scuttled memory, will shine once more.
You’ll put to sea, as you were born to do,
know its soak and sting again: the silver eternity
unfurling by the hour, and your course steady enough
to guide you, unhindered, on your final crossing.