HMS Metaphor Edit 1.1ellajam,crow

[tectak]

Ah, how fortune swings the points; stars by night, lodestone by day.
North by South...we tack the winds, that once blew us the other way.
Never turning into gale or by Charybdis, we’ll not go;
that arrow flight to Scylla aimed
is test enough so we scrape by.
Good fortune brags out, loud proclaimed,
but tongues still lie...if we near die.

If we near die beneath the tide -- heaving, dragging deep below--
tell no one but mark the spot; hoist sail, strain sheets and onward blow.
Awkward seas confound us all, so through the spy-glass we must peer;
the promised land, a lighthouse beam
is all our inward prayers demand.
But on this swell we live out dreams;
hopes come and go like sunken sands.

Sunken sands will come and go; charts and maps can not make clear
wither way to spin the wheel, or where to head or where to steer.
Cast adrift we rise, we fall, we spin, we toss, we plunge, we yaw.
The skipper tells us we’ll survive,
if we have faith all will be well.
Then Metaphor makes one last dive
to Davy’s Deep…the last Eighth Bell.

Tectak
2002 revisited

Hey, no surprise but great job. I like sunken sands, saying it and the threat of it. "so through the spy-glass we must peer" is so much better, and even "near die" is fine, I think the combination of the rhyme and the ellipsis really works. Thanks for the lesson.

You did it ella. Thank you.
tectak