The Mary Rose, Poem by Brendan McCallum

There was little time, even less warning,
when an anger of ocean smashed
her portside and in a blink
the mother-of-all broke her like a stick,
today she sits with her remainder of men.

Currents sea-wind her beech decks
and wave a sheaf of seaweed flags,
a click of crabs entertain in her lower reaches
stargazed by swords of fractured light
ghosted through the blue-green,
the night alone would close her soul and free
a fleet of rainbowed life aswim between the ribs of men.

She creaks and flexes, tied only by anchor in the undercurrent,
twisting from stern to hull she moans as an old man
while a wicked brine corrodes and preserves selectively,
imprisoned from swell and tempered wave she rests,
bit by bit returned to a collecting shore,
a jigsaw of remains.


BG