This is an older poem and I had no realized the glaring errors that it contained until I read it again this morning.  Sea Oat is what I'm naming the sailboat I buy when I move to the coast, hopefully sometime this year.  On my web site you can see a painting I've done of her sailing into stormy seas.  Know what?  You people are the best.    


The Sea Oat

by Michael


More life behind than that ahead.
So many paths I've walked along.
Too many words that went unsaid.
Favorite music, now old song.

How could my beard have turned to gray?
Too young am I for this to be.
The many words I've still to say
and many dreams I've yet to see.

The many troubled waters crossed,
sometimes the tiller stiff in hand.
At times in charted waters, lost.
Still others, I lost sight of land.

At times, the wind is hard to find.
Full-battened sails to catch the gust.
Sometimes the grayness comes to mind.
My instincts now I know to trust.

The hour's late and I must make
this crossing in the dead of night,
to leave the safety of the shore.
I'll add more sail, the wind is light.

The Sea Oat moans both fore and aft
and rides the swells in front of me.
A fresh wind comes from out the West
and drives her hard upon the sea.

Of dead mariners do I think,
on ocean bottom where they lie,
of ships they trusted not to sink,
of loved ones left at home to cry.

Though my favorite songs are old,
there is still youth beneath the gray.
The voyage made this night is bold.
The unsaid words I now will say.

Ahead I push, I'm homeward bound.
A fire they've kept that I might see,
to guide the Sea Oat to that sound,
that I might not be lost at sea.

So eager, do I watch the night,
while stars are swallowed in the deep
and one by one, more near to light,
much closer to my love to keep.

Should my ship founder on its way,
this voyage end and take my life,
the words unsaid I now will say,
I could not find a better wife.

I became lost within your eyes.
My compass broke the day we met.
The deepest passion in me rose
and from that day my sails were set.

Like me, the Sea Oat too is gray.
It takes on water now and then.
So many sails I've had to mend,
that I might journey on my way.

So stoke the fire, I need the light.
Oh how I long to see your face.
Please push the darkness from this night.
I'll only drown in your embrace.  

Proust-
"Love is space and time measured by the heart"

Live for love. Without love, you don't live.

Proust-
"Love is space and time measured by the heart"

A smile a day keeps the world in smile's.
Bernie Slicker