From The Road...The Old Sea Captain
The craggy-faced captain stopped and placed a pinch or two of tobacco in his ole scrimshaw pipe.
He wears faded blue overalls and a Greek captains hat. Early mornings, along Oyster Creek, you just might find him lumbering down the road towards the old wooden pier, carrying a old cooler filled
with ice, and a fishing rod slung over his beefy shoulder. Tackle swings like a pendulum behind his back until he reaches his favorite bench, close to the end. He pulls out a bag of shrimp from the cooler, baits his hooks and casts his line as far as arthritis allows—sits there until noon, either catching fish or not; it’s all the same to him. It’s the sun and wind and rain he’s come for—the view of shrimp boats headed out to sea, crews tiny as toy soldiers. He can hear the cries of hungry gulls, feel each vessel’s pitch and toss. He is captain of nothing now, save his own soul. And what his soul wants, is to keep his body close to water—until the moon captures him in her net and pulls it with cool, white hands into asunder.
I watched him today. Quiet, deliberate and some what sullen as he made his way. What words might fill his head, what thoughts left unsaid. He has loved both storm and calm, the flapping sail was his soul's applause, and his rapture was a roaring main. But now like a battered hulk he seems to me, cast high on a foreign strand...in port as it need must be, gives him yet another round of listless hours.
The smoke from his pipe lingered in the languid air...the grass, the trees and the garden flowers, and the strange earth everywhere. At times he seemed restless there without the hail of a passing sail, nor the surge of an angry sea.
He quits his pipe, and snaps head as if to speak, but coughs instead, then paces the pier like as if a quarter deck. With a reeling mast o'er head, the old captains cheeks were glowing warm. His eyes gleamed grim and weird, as he muttered about like a thunder-storm.
Then came the stay of a daughters hand and his grandchild 'twixt his knees. And so betimes he is restless here, his daughters home is a peaceful vale...but never the hail of a passing sail nor the surge of an angry sea...so it seemed to me.
