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The Sailor’s Curse by Lelia Thomas

The swaying of the waves like flowing dancers
’Neath an angry sky of bruis’d clouds.
The beating of the drummer’s thunder,
A mate to the jagged strip of golden lightning.
Of storms and impassion’d wind—
The nightmare of the sea.

The raw and rag’d shouts of rushing men
’Neath the grey of the rain-spatter’d night.
The cursing as the timbered-world tilts,
A mate to the cries of dying seamen.
Of lost loves and swallow’d hopes—
The irony of the sea.

When you see her there ‘tween bluest waves and greenest foam,
Her beauty fairer than the sweetest rose,
Forget not that she makes no oath.
For though her beauty reaches across all oceans,
She is also the beguiling mother of the sirens.
Her wind sings to you across the waves,
But her whirlpools are the lion’s den—
The price of the Lady of the Sea.

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2003. Nature is a powerful being.