Underway or Audacity in Blue

It was “haze gray and underway”,

a mantra from my youth,

that turned me to this retrospect,
to lessons learned in truth.

I was just 19 and counting
when they sent me to sea.
I’m lost for words to tell you, mate,
just what it meant to me

to mount that brow and board that ship.

My heart was filled with fear

the first time that I saw her from

the Alameda pier.

Though more than fifty years have passed

I can recall it still

as if it happened yesterday.

It took near all my will

to climb aboard, salute the flag

and face the grizzled Chief

who took my papers, sized me up

and offered no relief.

“Stand fast a minute son", he said,

“does mom know you're about?”

“I’ll call the watch in radio,

we’ll sort this here shit out.”

“Come down and claim his ass”, he said

into the duty phone,

“Ya better hurry, mate, he's much

to young to be alone.”

A chief was near to God himself

to this, my former self,

but I’d survive, report aboard

and find my rack, a shelf

up near the metal overhead.

With “fondness”, I recall--

I slept in Sailor heaven twixt

a steam pipe and a wall.

A “bulkhead”, not a wall, I know,

at least I know it now.

I learned this fact and others but

don’t ask me when or how.

The mists of time hang round my head

in never ending lines...

the dark exotic ports of call,

the taste of Spanish wines,

the days at sea, the months and years

of salty sailor lore,

the ports and bars I can’t recall--

or won’t. A distant shore...

a sea of stories heard and told,

of truth and blatant myth,

I've scant recall of oceans crossed

or mates that I drank with.

Across the years the ocean breeze

has filled this sailor's sails

with gratitude and in the end,

in truth, it never fails

to fill me with amazement that

that timid lad I knew

was turned into a salty swab...

audacity in blue.


~ Dean Neighbors ~