By Dave
Doldrums and gales—
I am a ship at sea,
the wind my mercurial lover,
fickle as foam on the break.
She comes when she wills,
filling my canvas with hunger,
snapping halyards taut with need.
She moans in the rigging,
a shanty of salt and longing,
driving me broadside
against the compass of sense.
I heel under her touch,
keel slicing strange tides
charted only in dream.
She bears me toward mythic coasts,
past shoals unnamed,
past stars whose constellations
burn with unfamiliar stories.
But then—stillness.
No breeze in the stays,
no pressure in the sails.
Only the cruel intimacy
of the doldrums—
that windless paralysis
where desire hangs
like a gull over glass seas.
I trim the sheets in vain.
Even the capstan forgets its turning.
Each hour becalmed
is a confession.
And yet—
I would ballast my soul
with every silence she gives,
just for the brief exhale
of her return.
When she comes again—
and she always does—
she wears another face,
a new latitude of mood.
Sometimes a nor’easter,
all fury and white-knuckled helm.
Sometimes a sigh from the south,
barely enough to ghost the jib.
Still, I brace.
Still, I offer my prow,
bright as a prayer
and just as unanswered.
I am a vessel of longing,
forever rigged
for the next tempest or tease.
She is the wind.
And I,
her conscripted mariner,
sail by the grace
of her choosing.