Generations
As the dusk deepens, the waves increase.
The fiberglass beneath my bare feet shudders with each impact, the bow rising
like a mountain before me as we crest, then disappearing into the darkness
of the next trough.
The surface around this little island is alive with faces and shapes, some
strange, some familiar and calling.
The dim, shadowy silouhettes of the passengers seem vague and unreal, as if
they don’t belong in the world the sea is weaving this night.
The warm orange glow of the compass keeps my mind anchored as it slowly dances
within its bubble, preventing me from becoming lost in those beckoning, barely
perceivable shapes that writhe and flow in the numbing gray.
I have been here before. I can feel it.
With each heave of the bow, a thousand generations pull at the wheel. With
each burning spray of salt water, a thousand generations laugh.
The cord wrapped wheel beneath my palms has been brass and it has been wood,
it has been a tiller and a scull.
It has guided my through fresh water and salt in every ocean and sea, through
fjord and bayou.
My feet have felt the tremors of the sea through decks of sun baked wood,
steel and fiberglass, reed and hide.
There is no fear this night. There is no stress.
There is no world at all outside of these gray, writhing mountains and valleys
with which I waltz.
There is only the rough, salt soaked wheel in my hands, the soft glow of the
compass’ slow liquid dance, and the knowledge that I belong here, more
than any place in the world.
I am finally home.
W. Salzmann