Battered Ship

22 line poem

So sail we, our uncertain way,

My faithful battered ship, The Youth,

Wandering in waves, those ruthless seas of life. 

The waves are countless, endless, always pounding,

The waves, waving,

Always, always buffeting my ragged wooden youth. 

The Islands on the shores, we do not seek,

For unlike the endlessness which domains these waters,

It seems that treachery, treachery, treachery,

Stenches the Isles, chokes the shore,

The winds are restless, always howling

Their note of doom,

Sent by skies of gray and hate

With hopes of starving in my one youth

And send youth and I, Jason

Spiraling, drowned into watery depths. 

The tossing seas sweep wreckage past us,

And many are the bow spirits I know,

My youth is battered and I, Jason, am weary,

But still with holy grain fervor,

Youth, Mine ship, and I, Jason will sail on

To our clouded quests end and shore.

Raymond Lee Collins  Age 17

Composed December 19, 1969

Belleville, Illinois

raymondofthewoods 

copyright reserved by the publisher, Carol A Wells