The Steersman

At night I walked in the winter months 

By the banks of an old canal,

Where the barges lit their ghostly lamps

Like the wake of a funeral,

They would glide in those silent waters 

With their silence like a shroud,

The horse at the end of the towrope

Passed me by, its head unbowed.

They sat so low in the water with

Their tons of pitch black coal,

The coal dust covered their livery

And of course, the paint was old,

A single steersman sat aloft

At the rear, and he looked ahead,

The black cut-out of a silhouette

Of a man that could be dead.

One night ahead of a hump-backed bridge

Where the towpath passed below,

The mist was a thick grey swirling mass

As the horse passed by me, slow,

I saw the glow of the ghostly lamp

And then as the barge appeared,

Just nosing out of the bank of fog

I thought that the bow looked weird.

For glistening under the ghostly lamp

And over the cabin door,

I saw a stream of something damp,

Was it mud, or blood, or gore?

I waited until the barge had passed

With the steersman, in my fright,

And I called out ‘Bloody murder!

‘You should look to your bow tonight.’

And the steersman muttered ‘Carolyn’,

In a voice both muted, low,

His voice came whispering back to me,

‘She shouldn’t have used me so.’

I saw his cardboard cut-out turn

In the glow of the ghostly lamp,

But then the barge slipped into the mist

Along with its bloody stamp.

I didn’t know where it disappeared 

On its voyage into the mist,

Along with its grisly cargo though

Its name was ‘Amethyst’,

But Carolyn lay aboard somewhere

In a pool of her blood as well,

As that barge would nose its way through mist

To enter the gates of hell.

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[Coyote Poetry]

A sad ending to a wonderful tale shared. Thank you David for sharing your amazing poetry and thoughts. I do enjoy.
Coyote

[Abigail Latoreno]

How creative! I love the tone of the poem. Well executed.

[TPK Stories]

Looks like I'm the first to comment. Great story David. As always!