The Seas (and Other Ancient Things)

Added 23 June 2003

He taught of the seas
and other ancient things.
The old salty dog paced
the ramshackle shelter
as the captain of this world
throwing his thoughts at the class
like edicts from Experience.
We, his crew, absorbed his orders
to the Creator of How Things Are.

He asked a question that I don't even recall
about what he had just told us.
My answer to it is equally forgotten.
Then came a question remembered,
and with reason.

"What is the power in the Pyramids?"

I responded at length about the angles
and the power of pi
but during my dissertation the Dog
turned blood hound and lunged for me
with the devil in tow.
Brimstone managed only to just hang on
to the Old Salt's face,
fuming and booming.

"Wrong!" I was told,
"You're not thinking right!"
The old man added his salt to the bite
so as to make it sting as it bled.

. . . His question asked again . . .

"What is the power in the Pyramids?"

Only this time he hung over his 'prentices.
The class, this gathered few,
sat with heads hunched in silence
while I brooded over my response,
a man kicked by the Dog.

"THE STRENGTH OF THE ROCK!"
quoth he.
And then I understood
that I had misunderstood
the slant of his question.

That didn't mean
I needed any less to vent.
Words welled up in my mind
in the gaining force of the swell.

He was called away as my sea
raged on silently, awaiting his return.
Waiting to batter down the sea wall
and lunge upon his town
and strip it down to the bare fatal flaw.

When the Salt did return
it was with such affability
that one of my fellows
brightly brought up
the subject of the paper
ships everyone had made and sailed
while I, for reasons unknown,
was not in class.

The mate, who looked
like an old actor of repute
whose name I can't recall,
told how his wife had sailed
his ship and then laughed
as he explained that a mini-tornado
had sunk it.

The Salt said, "Well, that sometimes ha-"
"Nay!" said I, interrupting,
redirecting my POWER to humour,
booming, "T'was the whalefish! The whalefish!
The whalefish hove her in twain!"

My mates laughed, as the Dog did too.
With a single heaved chuckle
he said "You are very good."
And then I sprung my attack.

Written 22 January 2001