Pirate Poem by Jean Renwick

When we were young, I used to laugh as you kicked
fallen leaves into the air
and slashed with an imaginary sword.
All that aggression giving rise to nought.
I know now though, whence that aggression came.
And how years later, you spent it.
Never on me.
I often felt like those wisened autumn victims,
looking for a passion to which I could
answer with my own, to prove
this passivity has powerful undercurrents.

Your love, so true.
So achingly true that it pulled another into its tide.
Not you being a wee spendthrift this time,
but one who’ll drain you; make you give ‘till
you’ve nothing left and then who’ll slight you for it.
We three cannot live together
though my heart and body dwell in yours and I am
less than half when we are parted.
I cannot digest the sharing of you that is
me, with someone else.
It tears me to ribbons as if from
swallow’d shards of glass.
Aye, indeed, to consume anything but your love
feels thus.

But I will go on accepting it -
whatever you reserve for me.
I’ll take every silver touch as a promise,
and store every golden word as a treasure.
Knowing, because we love,
That you’ll come seeking again your home on my ocean.