Darran Amsterdam
Sea SongHis hands had channels in them.
Canals, ravines.
They bore the scars of hooks,
palms hewn coarse by rope.
His hands were oak.I remember him
hobbling along the salt-worn paths
to take that same resting place and stare out to sea.
We'd be clambering up trees in the orange groves,
streaming down the furrows
in wheatfields and canebrakes
and I'd slip away and approach him.And he'd say to me in a voice
full of crackles like birchwood in a fire,
"Son if you only knew what lies out there.Now my bones are knotted wood
that creak and tire and disobey
and will not do what they once could,
and every step seek to betray
I can only sit and dream
of the places I have been.Out beyond that placid blue
We sailed for year upon hallowed year
And with my brothers of the crew
Through each splendid world we?d steer,
Tide-bound we'd lay upon the decks
an atlas as our sacred text.Time does not dim the things we passed
in memories they're clear as day
inside my head I have amassed
the sight of dawn on Bohai Bay,
on Katun River the scent of pine
out of our minds on altar wine.At every port we'd leave our sins
The cabarets of old Shanghai
Hong Kong junks with dragons' fins
would cheer and wave as we passed-by
to local time we'd set our clocks
and set off joyous from the docks.A universe wild beneath the waves
Jewelfish flit like exiled Tsars
Spider crabs scuttle into caves
past coffinfish and serpent stars.
A pilot's bones of coral made,
his eyes are pearls, his skull is jade.In Spanish galleons capsized
ghost shoals of jellyfish glide
over chests of gold they rise
through portholes on the starboard side.
Something is tapping Morse for 'help'
on an iron hull within the kelp.A submarine sharks and prowls a trench
in the thistled depths of glacial fjords
a stave church clings to a mountain drenched
by storm fronts advancing in their hordes.
And tied to the mast they say
godless men are heard to pray.Every man looks to the skies
Barbary Corsairs, Knights of St John
The constellations are allies
To navigate before the dawn
The North Star and the Southern Cross
Without them we are blind and lost.Oil rigs perch on the continental shelf
Where red beard Scandinavians drink
As the mists rolls in they toast their health
And the currents surge over the brink.
The oceans heave and ride roughshod
Thundering, thundering like some mad God."There are nights when the wind and rain
howls in from the ocean and rattles my window
as a faint voice chants on the radio
the shipping forecast in its mournful song
Viking, Cromarty, Hebrides
Bailey, Fisher, Malin Head
and I think of what he said
and I start to dreaming.
Bio:
Darran Amsterdam is 24-year-old writer from Derry in the north of Ireland. His work has been published with Poetry Salzburg (Austria), Hard Luck Magazine (Tennessee), Culture Northern Ireland, Deaddrunkdublin and the BBC. He lives near the Atlantic Ocean where his grandfather was a fisherman and he has grown up with a fascination with the sea and seafaring.
