Harboring Dream

This one is definitely out of period, but I think we can all recognize the urge to escape the mundane for a life of adventure. This is a stream of conscious, free verse poem.


Harboring Dream

That’s the S.S. Cape Hudson, out of NorfolkVirginia
Tonight she sails for Abu Dhabi on the Persian Coast;
Another journey of ten thousand miles,
Answering the call of deep water,
To see what’s on the other side.
I’m reminded how, once in Savannah,
I watched the Sierra Cargo steam down the channel,
Making for open sea.
Five foot letters across her stern
Proclaimed her port of origin.
Singapore: queen city of the South Pacific’
Old and dirty, and wicked and alive;
Where junks and sampans that line the harbor
Float a bootleg economy from ship to shore,
And olive-skinned sirens tempt young sailors
With eyes that promise a night in heaven
In exchange for a sailor’s pay;
And I imagined myself walking those streets and back alleys,
Exploring this city from the dockside up;
The bars and the brothels, and the quayside dives,
Behind a mocking old chinaman
With a scar on one cheek, and two fingers missing,
And a knife as long as my arm thrust into his belt.
And I laughed at myself,
A middle-class white boy
From a land-locked county,
Never in salt water over my head,
And well past the age of adventure,
Still dreaming of brine-soaked decks
And sinful old cities,
And cynical dark eyes
That size me up,
And promise me heaven.
Yet sometimes, I wonder,
Were I to loose my hawsers and
Slip free of my obligations,
Would I sign myself on
With the good ship, Cape Hudson,
Purely from desire to watch
And Arabian sunset?
Singapore calls me,
And Rangoon, and Capetown,
And all the backwater ports
Where driftwood washes ashore.
At night, as I lie, my good wife beside me
In our comfortable bed,
I whisper their names to conjure my dreams.
I’m a barbary prince, and a middle-aged pirate,
And I think that tomorrow
I’ll buy me a parrot.
And over the miles
The sea hears my whispers,
And the sea keeps my secrets,
And the sea whispers back.
Her waves gently rock me to sleep cross the distance.
And come morning, I rise
To face freeway and office
Through a sea-blue haze
Of a dream half-remembered.
I hear seagulls in the traffic
And taste salt on the wind,
And the receptionist has dark foreign eys
That promise me heaven
For a sailor’s pay.