Very beautiful!!!!!!!!!!! I LOVE YOUR WORDS!!!!!!!!! Liana Margiva

Hi Gene,
Just because I've not written does not mean I haven't been reading. I like this one and Godiva. Not to say I don't like the others. It's a commentary on my personal sensibility (and style, probably) that I like distillation (no, not the high-proof type!). You reach me best when your lovely imagination finds a resonant coda, often abruptly: awareness after a dream, the sudden end of a voyage. You do that well. Keep it up.
Charlie
Charlie

i love how the ocean of your harboured words rock me. ..
leaves me quite silent and stilled and so wanting more sea air. . ..
more of this please. . .
more nuance and undulation of emotion; more silhouetted selves and seas.pray...
i could read this stuff until the words are long faded and im left awash in white.
nessa

Your words create their own melodic cadence...and take us to that harbor in your mind. That extended hand...a sign of respect... makes me contemplate the girl of my childhood years and the woman I've become.

Cryssa

whoa...the spirit of your past is what I gather from this poem...
Very unnerving reaching out to then realize....reality has set in
letting go of our youth is a storm in itself
I love the descriptive words you have blessed you poem with giving us a real visual-as always :)
Much Love To You Gene
Embraced ~ Embrassé
Vickie

A brilliant, insightful write! I wonder what you would have said to the young Gene of the past, what wisdom you could have given him for his future. SC

That's what poetry is: different things to different readers. That's why I love reading you: you take me there in powerfully imaged lines. A haunting quality to your lines. Don't let comments of one dull your pen. Keep writing. I need your words.

(((HUGS))) and love, Karla.

This reminds me for all the world of "boy running to meet man, man running to meet boy"... awakened rudely by reality on life's ship. The fog adds to the time-lapse feel of the piece. Shadows, to me, tell a tale of sadness on both sides-- shattered dreams on the one side-- regrets and longing on the other... and yet, with the eyes meeting, and the extended hand, there is that reconciliation...a coming to know yourself in the end, that erases regret, and pieces together young dreams. Moments of epiphany-- self forgiving-- interspection, that increase love of self, and understanding can rock a crusty old ship-- Safe sailing, Sailor. --Charlie

Gene, this is so hantingly beautiful, and left me with a sense of feeling lost and alone. Beautiful writing...but it's what we've come to expect from you, isn't it?

I almost could see the water front. Your words has taken me there with you. Wonderful write, Gene!

Sandie May :o)

The loneliness is alive in this poem. The images remind of being on sentry duty from midnight to four. The darkness is thick with enemies born from my imagination like the narrator's young man/father that vanished when the horn startled him and he squinted into the empty night.

Beautiful self-reflection. -- Jeff

Takes me there with you, too as the other said. Wonderful write about the ocean and I love ocean writes**********

Both the fleeting and the permanent are captured here and their blend is what you are, what all of us are...that intriguing mixture of memory and emotion, recall and loss and special moments of reality and dream.
John

Feels like I am there, wish I were, better than here at this time...ed

Powerful images from memory, which is sometimes realer than now. I can feel it, smell it, see it. Thanks!

Beautiful haunting write. It was like I was there. Wonderful write Gene, Love, Bonnie

Hauntingly realistic.