It was “haze gray and underway”,
a mantra from my youth,
that turned me to this retrospect,
to lessons learned in truth.
to lessons learned in truth.
I was just 19 and counting
when they sent me to sea.
I’m lost for words to tell you, mate,
just what it meant to me
when they sent me to sea.
I’m lost for words to tell you, mate,
just what it meant to me
to mount that brow and board that ship.
My heart was filled with fear
the first time that I saw her from
the Alameda pier.
Though more than fifty years have passed
I can recall it still
as if it happened yesterday.
It took near all my will
to climb aboard, salute the flag
and face the grizzled Chief
who took my papers, sized me up
and offered no relief.
“Stand fast a minute son", he said,
“does mom know you're about?”
“I’ll call the watch in radio,
we’ll sort this here shit out.”
“Come down and claim his ass”, he said
into the duty phone,
“Ya better hurry, mate, he's much
to young to be alone.”
A chief was near to God himself
to this, my former self,
but I’d survive, report aboard
and find my rack, a shelf
up near the metal overhead.
With “fondness”, I recall--
I slept in Sailor heaven twixt
a steam pipe and a wall.
A “bulkhead”, not a wall, I know,
at least I know it now.
I learned this fact and others but
don’t ask me when or how.
The mists of time hang round my head
in never ending lines...
the dark exotic ports of call,
the taste of Spanish wines,
the days at sea, the months and years
of salty sailor lore,
the ports and bars I can’t recall--
or won’t. A distant shore...
a sea of stories heard and told,
of truth and blatant myth,
I've scant recall of oceans crossed
or mates that I drank with.
Across the years the ocean breeze
has filled this sailor's sails
with gratitude and in the end,
in truth, it never fails
to fill me with amazement that
that timid lad I knew
was turned into a salty swab...
audacity in blue.
~ Dean Neighbors ~
~ Dean Neighbors ~
