Ocean Breeze and Theme

The ocean is in my blood.
A 32-foot sailboat
was my home for a year.
Ventura Marina,
and I, a budding teenage poet.
Dad, the captain,
me and my brother,
first and second mates.
The Pacific spitting salt
on our face.

Fishing lines tied to the dock,
maybe a tom-cod
or a little jack smelt
for breakfast,
if luck was on my side.

Melville in my jacket,
Billy Budd’s tragedy
inked across the pages.

“See, self-defense.
Billy had a speech impediment,
no match for Claggart’s slick,
twisted tongue.”

I brought home my book report,
big red C-minus
circled at the top.
Dad smiled,
taught me the waves,
how plot flows,
theme drifts,
and literary device docked.

I aced literature
from that moment on.

I think of T.S.,
distant relative.
He probably caught a few.
Eyes on the East Coast,
lighthouses and lines,
pondering the next rhyme scheme.

Blood swimming
with memory of current
and the stories
that are born.