With her sails fully set and a breeze of fair force
She was carving her way through the ocean,
But with no crew aboard to take charge of her course
She was borne by the wind and wave motion.
On the deck, all was shipshape; the rigging made fast
And no sign of attack by marauders,
But no lookout was stationed on top of the mast
And no captain was barking out orders.
In her log the last entry was seven days old;
There were uneaten meals on the table.
From below came a rumble as some object rolled.
Just a barrel torn free from its cable.
There was no other item of cargo displaced
And all hatches were sound and in order,
But no clue to the plight that the ship’s crew had faced
Nor the reason that none were aboard her.
With a cargo intact and a seaworthy craft
— Though no sign of the crew or the master —
And with all made secure as could be, fore and aft,
There was nothing to point to disaster.
But where could she have come from and where was she bound
At the whim of the tide and the weather?
And what were her chances of running aground
With the loss of the ship altogether?
She remained on her course till the wind from the east
Swung around to the north and then slackened
And a fog began forming that quickly increased
As the ominous skies above blackened.
She resembled a ghost as the oncoming night
And the fog began closing around her.
Then at last she was gone and was lost to all sight
And no person has ever yet found her…
© 2017 Dennis Turner