Poem: Ghost Ship

Beneath the stormy waves the ghost ship plunged.
It out of sight, we hoped she was now done,
and quick was our attention wrest that night
with awful weather we forgot that sight.
And yet the truth: the ship forsook us not,
but under raging seas it passed un-fraught.
It under our small boat did sailing come
while we above did fight to save our rum.
To keep the demons’ drink from devils’ sea
the crew, doomed men, performed most valiantly.

You rumrunners who in the night’s reproach
poison deliver to the decent folk:
beware, sailors, the ghost ship in your wake;
beware, good men, the paths that you now take.

The storm abated once three men were lost.
The third, once falling in the waves that tossed,
did calm the fury of that mystic gale,
but killed the wind. And thus went slack our sail,
putting an end to…