Lament for a Mariner
The sea is very thin this day
that Archie Ruag has gone.
Master mariner, graceful navigator,
Wise teacher of ocean mystery.
No more to grace the ocean’s ships
But gone to whence he came.
My sons at eleven years and ten
|
children in men’s mourning |
|
saw him laid to rest |
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in my place, |
| as storms and hail swept Barra, |
|
and their small frames |
|
grew in maturing |
|
of Archie’s dying. |
And I sit here in Canada |
|
Writing, grieving, |
Knowing the sea is very thin this
day
That Archie Ruag has gone.
I saw him last, pale and weary
With calm before his death.
His spirit surrounded by antiseptic ward, |
|
but not beleaguered. |
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He knows I was not equal |
|
to his dying. |
| So he spoke gently to me |
|
of ships
and men |
| at sea, and moorings |
| safe to guard our boats |
| from winter’s cruelty. |
| And so, in this way |
| did he gently rebuke |
| my lack of courage |
|
in his dying. |
| So that I may have strength |
|
in my own time
of death.
|
This is known
to senses awry with grief’s knife.
The tears of my cheeks
on a rainswept street
a meditation
on the knowing of him.
Yet I miss him.
An anchor gone from my seasons |
|
of the sea. |
The sea is very thin this day
That Archie Ruag has gone. |
Ottawa, 1979
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