Listen:
I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
and all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by
It’s quiet, always. I miss birdsong more than almost anything else. Can’t be completely certain but I’m surely getting close now. There’s a salt tang in the air unlike the sour stench of the towns and the damp, gloomy forests – what’s left of them, anyway.
I hack and spit rusty bubbles beside tattered boots. Humans were made to move, but this slow trek is nothing like running and going nowhere for fun. Now I walk, escaping nowhere and carrying it within.
Rest is death.
Behind me, blasted trees stretch gaunt black limbs skyward, twisted and shrieking in the endless wind. My coat barely yields to the breeze, its fabric thick with secrets and stained with unbearable memories. There’s too much knowledge for one man to contain.
I should go on.
I settle on a fallen trunk and cough. Pain spikes hot in my chest.
Maybe we could never have proved ourselves worthy stewards of the universe when every call for caution was ignored, drowned by the triumphant roar of all the other wishes granted to man in his pursuit of mastery. The genie will never return to the bottle, because he exults in his freedom and terrible power to remake the world.
We were our own nemesis, and we refused to believe it. I look up, try to believe the sun still shines, high above the sullen clouds. If it has not forsaken us, why can I not feel it?
I hack and spit red. Red used to mean love. I could curl up here – find solace hidden between roots ripped from grieving earth – dream of all I have lost, and all that has been snatched away. I could rest.
Just a little further.
This desolate greying hill is the last, I’m certain. I will come to the sea, to the end and the beginning. My pack lies empty at my feet. The tighter I clutch my past, the faster it disintegrates in my hands.
What’s a man without a past? What’s a man without a future?
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
and quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.
Poetry excerpted from Sea Fever by John Masefield
Thanks for reading!
This post perfectly captures my feelings about what mankind has been doing to the earth. We’re wearing this planet out, and there is no other one for us. Or if there is, we do not deserve it.
This little piece was not long enough to include hope. Maybe our time on earth will be long enough to right at least some of our wrongs. Thanks for reading.