After The Storm - Part 2 Poem by Paddy Scott Hogg

After the storm
Is this the calmer waters
The peaceful harbour
After youth’s chaos
The crashing down
Of white water waves of testosterone driven blindness
Co-mingled hurt and joy
To the quieter days of slippers
The comfy chair
The coal fire burning
Sitting stroking the dog in peaceful contemplation
Before the grave envelopes this carcass?

No more will I venture
Where the wide jaws of mountainous waves
Lash up to the cliffs peak
By the fog horn at the Gellay
Surging in a back-wash of white waters' fury
And the teeth of the greeny brown sea bed snarl

Quite a memory
Of when Dad and I wrestled with the white wall of fury
When words were ripped from my mouth
'Get us to HELL out of here! '
Climbing up one giant wave as another wall of boiling white
Came crashing over the top of the first breaker
Monsterous wave,
Wall upon wall
Into the boat
Smashing us together in a knot of washed panic
Yet we lived to tell the tale
And walk on terra firma once again
After the STORM! ! !

Yet I long for the sea once more.............