The Harbor

We saw a busy port, saw ships of all sizes
Comings and goings with some intended, some not
Often haphazard, chaotic it seemed at the time
Excited the senses, upset the plans of the past

Ships with bright sails and ships with no sails at all
Anchors not holding there with the unstable base
Sometimes colliding, sometimes just drifting away
Hard to know just where they all wanted to go

Captains and first-mates not on the very same page
impingements, pummeling, knockings about in the sea
Mostly recovering, repairs that seem to be working
Now I don’t see them, no lovely sails are in sight

No one expected a storm so vicious as that one
Boats that seemed safe were no longer here at the dawn
Divers were hired to see if recovery made sense
Often costs of retrieval were more than the value

Still some were raised and made seaworthy again
I recall how the harbor hummed with recovery
Now though it seemed oddly empty today
As though all the sailors were just called away

Ah the wear of storms that punish so
And toss our flimsy crafts so we don’t see them
And put most sturdy vessels to the bottom
Down where they lie decaying, one more corpse

But what if this is not the place I knew
Perhaps I’ve found an altogether different harbor
And my memory has played one of its tricks
If so the boats were never here back then

And maybe now they still could be seen
If I could find the harbor that they’re in
The brightness of their sails would tell the tale
And reassure me that some things do persist