A Song For The Sea Beneath The Western Stars

When in the midst of the great purple sea,
With waves surging and dancing on the bow,
With wind and night and moonlight all around me,
With reflected radiance shining in the water below,
A peace comes over me that is like no else I know
That seems to radiate down from the western stars,
A peace of the soul and of the heart both, spirit-peace
From the cares of the day and guilt’s prison bars,
Gazing up at their shine, my heart finds its release.

The wind that rings around me sings a surcease
Of hope and refuge and solace to be found in twilight,
When the lights of the day, and their cares, cease,
When the ocean turns dark with the coming of night.
Standing at the rail, I listen for the song that might
Rise from islands that we pass, if the tales are true,
And those isles are the haunt of the sailor-loving sirens.
But my gaze at last turns back to the endless blue
That ripples before me, sometimes with forging irons’

Sparks upon it, sometimes as still and dark as Charon’s
River, the Styx, that his own boat sails silently across.
Standing there, ears lifted for the song of the sirens,
I can imagine myself the captain of a boat of such loss,
Full of those pale spirits whose bodies are buried ‘neath moss.
But such an idea cannot endure for me for very long
Before the moon breaks free of a veil of pale gray cloud,
And across the water sings out a path of its own siren song,
Pale as swan feathers, as petals fallen from lilies in a crowd.

Sometimes the light sparkles back from the dorsal fin proud
Of a dolphin sporting and dancing along beside the ship.
Such dolphins alone never seem to splash or swim very loud;
One I remember made not a sound in his glide and dip,
Rising arched like a Romanesque portal, like a striking whip,
And then sliding beneath the waves silent once again.
He stayed beside us as if lonely for most of the night,
And I felt comfortable with him as I never have with men.
But he was gone when I looked for him at dawn’s first light.

More often, an entire pod briefly parts in its sleek flight,
And takes the ship into the middle, waves around a stone.
Though dolphins are sailors’ souls, I never take fright,
Or feel the solemn joy that I do when a dolphin rides alone,
But shout back to them, feeling as if I could atone
For all the sins that men has done them in that brief time.
Their noses lifted to the sky, they spin out of the sea,
Bodies gleaming with the spume that is shed from the clime
Where the stars shine, the remnants of ambrosia and ecstasy.

Strange things I have seen in the midst of the dark purple sea,
Things that gleam and shine and dance on the waves far away,
Pale things that I almost close my eyes that I might not see
Them as in the waltzes of sunken Atlantis they sway.
Or maybe it is the sound of the booming of the manta ray,
A great one flinging itself from the ocean and falling back down
Into the foam, and making foam of its own take to the air.
Or maybe it is a patch of moonlight that looks so like a crown
That I have to convince myself that nothing jeweled is there.

When I am sailing in the midst of the sea and in the night air,
Often my eyes lift to the western skies, and I see ruddy Mars,
And beyond him, brilliant and lovely, astonishing beyond compare,
Are the lights that I love, the radiance of the western stars.
Upon the waves their lights lie, like the ancient and rugged scars
Of canyons upon the desert. Though they waver from night to night,
Waver and part whenever something passes that I cannot see,
Still they hold that permanence; for forever sings the starlight,
And forever the song under the western stars of the dark purple sea.