Flying Dutchman

Etched in blood fire and
wreathed in grey, this wreck
stalks the stormy ocean.

Salt-rimed sheets
whiplashing the wind, it
crawls through fog limned in
cancer-creak of rigging.

Eerie gulls circle like vultures,
their ghostly cries shrugging
the mist from off wings.

The ship heaves the swell
like a ruined old hooker,
its boards sucking and
slapping the sea.

Yet it stands eternal,
supreme in its setting:
a clinker-built castle in
the forest of waves.

Added @ 01:57 PM to Poetry category on January 12, 2002