The Sea
6-23-08

The swelling sea envelops me again;
Within its tides I fear I lose myself.
My mind fills with the where, the how, the when,
Fills with the sea that crashes on itself.

The waves engulf and tempests toss about
The fragile vessels built by fragile man;
Upon this vast and roaring deep, I doubt
That I will e'er see past this blinding span.

Beneath the deck, though blind to waters be
I seek my peace but cannot find it here.
Worse than the crashing terrors of the sea
Are terrors wrought within me, ever near.

I think that I can ne'er escape despair,
But then I feel that you're beside me there.



                       In my friend's and my story, Masks in Moonlight, one of our characters, Tavi, is a poet, and this is inserted into the story as her work. She's a fan of the pseudo-Shakespearean poet that several of my other recent poems were designed to be works of. That's why her works are sonnets in iambic pentameter. For the story part that this one comes into, they had been at sea for weeks and hardly seen the sun the whole time. That made Tavi moody and "poet-y," so she wrote this during the voyage. Again she alludes to a person, like she did in "The Walls," but this time she has a specific someone in mind...

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