Over the rough and riding dark

Lest I begin to fade as a wintry glade
At the warmth of early spring,
Or quietly quiver like a summer’s river
As drought sands the swings,
I ought to move before I last reprove
The wellspring from where I come,
And set off afar to some distant star
To which I must become.

Fraught is the way, they are oft to say
On the quay where I embark,
And hard is the travail I must prevail
Over the rough and riding dark;
Peril is the pit that I must commit 
To surface the deepening
Of the violent turf of the briney surf
To meet my reckoning.

Long widens the strand of furthering land,
Which glimmers emerald and gold,
Behind a swelling blue that steals all I knew
Of my kin and culture old.
Fading now it goes as the wild west glows 
Burning the spray that flies,
And the gath’ring waves under fiery haze
Rupture and fail my eyes. 

Wistful is the wine-dark, horizon line
That disappears from my sight,
As the frightful black descends on my back
As the dripping sails take flight.
In the mustering gloom of hollowing doom
The blinding tempest veils
The last hopeful glint that an eye could squint
Between shrouds of scudding scales.

Whirling in the void, the stars are destroyed
And with them the torch I held.
Nothing now certain behind this curtain,
I am thrust and will-compelled
To the raging depths and billowing steps
Of the tumbling of the sea.
‘Dare to take me now!’ I yell from the prow
As my world descends from me.

Through the thick’ning air of the tempest glare
The thunder thuds and bellows,
And deep is the cut that slashes my gut
As the mouth of Zeus echoes.
The lightning crashes in rippling dashes,
Boils the deluge in the black,
Striking the tumult of Poseidon’s vault
In horrendous, terrible clack.

And the mast I cling, in the mad’ning swing,
Groans as we tumbling lurch
Down a spiral pool of watery spool
To our final resting scourge.
Splintering it breaks, the barque it forsakes
And into the wash I go;
Into the deep dark, where the void is stark
And the shadows truly flow.

... to be finished

By Dominic de Bonhomie