Requiem for a Mariner

weather battered ships ploughing watery realms
veteran seafarers manning masts
hauling chanteys ring out like church bells
while albatross tempt and Sirens seduce

mermaids speaking words of doom
as dangerous waters approach
and darkness smothers cloudless skies
land but a reminiscence now

kobold spirits live among them
conveying haunting omens
harbingers disaster in the waves
divulges its mischievous face to all in peril

down, down they sink like an anchor
a ghostly site, this sunken ship, this ethereal crew
voices silenced by the sound of a whistle
escaping from the lips of an errant Scylla

but, like the Dutchman, forever to sail
this spectral vision resurrects to the clouds
drifting aimlessly as crewman fly to safe harbor
follow the North Star home