SAILING SHIPS

Not just childhood miniature imitations
with paper sails and stick hulls for ponds
There were aged sailors who knew masts and ropes -
knots to hold their world together when wind and wave resist
Tricks to weave those canvas sails into a wild wind
they had stories like pipe smoke,drank the deep each night
Their bones are ashes now.Their ships in wrecker's piles.
I spent a year of life alongside POLLY WOODSIDE
She of sail with added engine/parked in Melbourne Port
(she would never sail Port Phillip seas again)
My elders parked in rest homes silent seas
They may never sail again/even willingly
They tell me stories of a time when men and ships were one
Of storms arising to challenge that sacred combination
And when i see an elder,silent,parked in harbor bed
I see another sailor in my head