Maiden Voyage

Posted by Brad Osborne on March 12, 2020 · 16 Comments 

 

 

Fifty-two tons, one of the unsinkable ones

The proud flag ship of the White Star Line

With Captain Smith true and a seasoned crew

Left Queenstown for the New York skyline

 

But the captain didn’t know that the fires below

Were more than the common occurrence

The hull became frail in the miles they sailed

In the end, that would make all the difference

 

The lookouts worked hard, the only light stars

On a night that was cold and forbidding

But they did not see the iceberg set free

Hidden beneath still seas unforgiving

 

Then it was too late to avoid their fate

As ghostly ice gouged the hull wide and deep

The stokers knew first, as steel bulkheads burst

They were headed to an eternal sleep

 

The tragic fail, lifeboats hung at the rail

Hoped salvation that could not be lowered

And as water rushed in, raising panic and din

The North Sea came for what was owed her

 

What sealed their fate, how light scintillates

As scared signalman flashes passing ship

Distant twinkling light on such a starry night

Not seen as beyond horizon they slipped

 

The sea it is said, never gives up her dead

Tragic souls are gathered like plunder

But in the demise, saved spirits do rise

As the behemoth slowly slips under

 

There below the waves, the ones left unsaved

As what they said could never happen did

An icy deep shrine, forgotten to time

Where all the mariner’s failures stay hid

 

 

 

Filed under Poetry · Tagged with fate, fire, iceberg, lifeboats, New York, North Sea, ocean, poem, Poetry, Queenstown, sea, sinking, strict form poetry, Titanic, unsinkable