Call Of The Sea Poem by Jim Young

Small fingers on the window ledge,
His tip toe chin levers him up to
Cold nose the misty bottom panes.
Eyes transfixed.
Pecking past the railway lines steel lines
The dockyard derricks are natter knitting
A balaclava for the sea.
Flashes of mercurial water,
Funnels colouring dock to dock,
The ships of cargo weave the wharf,
Of this brief encounter.

It is murmuring to the boy, but
He cannot quite decipher the signal sound,
As the Sirens of the sea snap back his eye.
The pilot tugs swing around the visage of
Land to sea, where you must go, for then
The whole wide world will open up to thee.
Falls back the boy to blink away
The flash from the horizon,
Where he has never been.

The three wooden crocodiles freeze.
The ivory elephants pause trunk to tail.
Iridescent butterfly wings halt powdery sad
Under the cracked glass of a tray.
Oriental thought home from the sea, where
Seamen sailed to lands and people far away.
The ukulele splices the main brace
Of the boy's tether to the land.
Face back hard to the window
His entrails entreat the pilot.
Wait for me! Wait for me!

The salt is in his veins,
Enthralled the more his uncles' tales
Of jolly Jack Tar and Singapore.
For he knew what they did not,
But suspected from the glint,
In the eye of the boy who felt,
The fall of rivers to the sea.
The sailor salt has woven its spell.
Way past the docks the sea ebbs,
And back against the hillside the boy intones,
I have made my choice,
It is the sea for me.

The South China Sea!
The Indian Ocean!
The trade winds!
Cape Horn!
The high seas!
From Arctic to Antarctic,
The storm petrel thoughts
Will deny him rest, until he too,
Has sailed the seven seas.