The Invisible Ship

Caroline called from the balcony

To join her and check out the bay,

‘You wouldn’t believe, there’s a barquentine,

You never see them today.’

I looked and I scanned the horizon there

But all I could see was the pier,

There wasn’t a sign of a barquentine

And all the horizon was clear.

‘I can see nothing,’ I told her then,

‘The sea is as calm as a pond,’

‘I’ll give you a hint, just make your eyes squint,

Then look to the pier and beyond.’

And suddenly there was a shadow shape,

That looked like a barquentine,

But out where it lay, it was old and grey,

And something about it obscene.

‘It makes me uneasy,’ I said to her,

‘There’s something transparent and cold,’

‘I think it’s romantic,’ was her reply,

‘It must be two hundred years old.’

It gave me the shivers, I went inside,

As rain pelted in at our door,

Though Caroline wouldn’t come in, but sighed,

And stayed where she’d stood before.

That night I woke up in the early hours

To find she had gone from our bed,

I followed her footsteps down to the pier

And saw her just walking ahead.

But Caroline wasn’t alone out there

She walked with a man I could see,

And holding his hand, she kissed him, and,

Was as transparent as he.

Then back in the cottage I found her there,

All restless, and tumbled in bed,

She suddenly woke, and gasped as she spoke,

‘I’ve had a strange dream in my head.

I’d been making love in that barquentine

To someone that I never knew,

He said we should go, but I told him ‘No’,

And then I came looking for you.`

We got up at dawn as the sun came up,

Walked out to the balcony,

We squinted our eyes, but to our surprise,

All we could see was the sea.

There wasn’t a sign of that barquentine

But only an empty pier,

And Caroline sighed, stood at my side,

‘Some things are much more than queer.’

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[softlyfall]

Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?"
Dreams take on a new significance when you consider reality with the eyes of quantum physics and neurology. Reality is largely illusional, an interpretation of sensory data by each brain, alone. Dreams are an interpretation of other things, we don't really know....but is that any less viable than the concept of consensus realty?
This coming from someone who was locked up for decades, of course, for being abstracted from consensus reality.
But, then again, I am not wrong either.
Pier and queer is a delicious pair that I have never seen before. Thank you for that. Yum.
This reads like
Did you follow Caroline into or out of the dream?
The meter is anapest here and there which gives your poem a feeling of mischief.

[TPK Stories]

She had quite a dream....well-told story.....

[Coyote Poetry]

A wild dream in this tale. Thank you David for sharing the story of mystery. A outstanding story.
Coyote

[Pragati Chaudhary]

Hahahahah
Lovely dream Indeed