A Sailor’s Epitaph
Inspired by our visit to the Bedford
Bethel, a memorial not of stone or bronze, but of poesy to the multitude who
found their final rest in the teeming waters. Dedicated to Julia.
See the pink of
sunset in the West
and the waning
light in East reclaiming
the blue of
sea. Holy quiet, far removed
from men’s
bustle, that permits thoughts
of wind and
water, of men lost long ago
and yesterday
upon the sea’s expanse.
These pebbles
still remember touch of
widow’s foot,
that long looked into the
black of night
with prayer for husband’s
and father’s
safety, that son and daughter
may see their
unknown father, winning
their bread and
salvation upon the fields
of water. But
they found their cross in
waters of third
baptism and this world
claimed its
citizens in overzealous wave
of air or
spray. The first caught his soul
in the Lord’s
net while water served
as shroud and
sepulcher to hide his body
till the final
day of God. He joins the
countless
scores of men most noble
whose ashes mix
with the wicked wiped
before Noah
from the Earth, and feeds
now the fish
that fed him and his family.
And behold what
monument God raises
to his children,
commanding wind to
endless paean
sing in place of inscribed
stone, blessing
the teeming fish and forest
to weave living
relics from their hearts.
Thus the
seaweed sways with the dance
they made upon
the swaying decks of ship,
and the whales
sing in depths with longing
note the
mariners of God sung beneath the stars.
The creeping
things arrange their bones
into swirling
shells and cups to serve as home
made in this
desert richer than rainforest,
and the
plankton rise touched by gleam
of Moon to
living floor lay beneath the
vault of heaven
to complete the basilica.
This sacred
domain I enter, destroyed
and raised in
single day, to fleeting shine
of sun catch
and envelop as if in flaming
fire the shell
I find and bless as candle,
prayer, and
token of my memory calling
to the silent
multitude of saints and sinners.
Requiem
aeternam dona eis, Domine.
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