a sonnet to a schooner

Sonnet to a Schooner

The broken rigged schooner awaits the auctioneer’s
gavel to fall to the highest bidder, who will dismantle
her plank by plank, as material to build holiday homes
for the rich: “The floor you walk on was once part of
a ship’s deck,” a home owner will proudly point out.
Doesn’t he know she was built by hand and thus has
a soul? Seafarers’ blood has dripped on her deck and
men have fatally fallen out of her rigs; funeral at sea
she has seen. If I tonight, when the wind comes from
shore, take a chance, set sail for the open seas, ghosts
of sailors past, will come, man the rigs and set sail for
an ocean beyond the known, one unseen by any man
alive; only I’m not yet prepared to go there, so I’ll
leave it for now, but will forever remember her well