“I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the skies

and all I ask is a tall ship and a star to stare her by…”

John Masefield

The Remains

By: Fee

Like bleached whalebones

That littered once our shore

It’s a glimpse of the past

We seldom see anymore

Spiced by salt in the wood

Just like old fishermen’s lore

The faded name on the hull

Is now threadbare and worn

While her anchor rope hangs

Among the rose bushes thorn

As she sits alone on the banks

Alone and looking so forlorn

Three generations worked her

Hands lovingly scarred by the sea

Until then the big foreign ships

Just couldn’t let her nets be

While the fuel’s rising cost

Brought honest men to their knee

Now the ghosts of her past

Like the wind through her cracks

Still sing the old sea shanties

Along forgotten slipway tracks

And the old timers run out a yarn

As they sit in their old fishing shacks…