BY TED THOMPSON
The Sea King
In a well run navy,
On the eve of hopeless battle,
Only The Sea King should worry
Sensing in the flurry of unseasonable snow
The soon to be widows and orphans
Of the aye aye confident
Dreaming of plunder snug below.
Pacing, embayed and out numbered,
He grows superstitious
And surreptitiously struggles to remember:
What do I know about the snow?
What can it mean?
What was the scene when last the night
Turned the world a glorious white?
Why it was Christmas
And I rose before the light to find my gifts,
And so his squadron struck their foe before dawn
Though none aboard knew why
Their Lord had chosen this childish time to die.
Nor why the sea got up,
Nor why the wind began shifting
Just as the wolves of The Sea King
Flashed into the sleeping fold
To leave the great fleet holed, defeated, drifting
And change the course of history.
To this day the miraculous remains a mystery.
The Sea King’s strange knowledge
Strains the range of any naval college
And so it falls to me
To tell you to how best even the impossible test.
Listen to the lessons that whisper in your blood
And listen carefully.
Hopeless heroes are heroes at their best.
I know for once I was he
Known in legend as King Upon the Sea.
The People You Meet in Valhalla
In his great, dusky hall
Surrounded by the vast sea he swept free
Of all he called the enemy,
An old man, at last, struggles out of bed.
His red shadow, like death, flickers larger
Than life against the wall.
Though no so tall as will undimmed,
Still, a mighty darkness follows him
As do the wide, white eyes
Of smaller, grimmer kin.
Alone outside as in,
He toasts the northern wind deeply
And then commits his grail to the tide.
The way through the piney rock
Rises crooked, thin and steeply
But it was ever his liking to go off a Viking
And he’s ready for one more ride.
The great never knock on any gate,
That’s no surprise
But, ah, this old rogue is wonder.
He has no urge to purge himself or to revise
A surging life of thunder.
He’s got no dream to be a harpist in the skies.
Instead, the moment he is dead,
He schemes to sack heaven
And seize the competition’s plunder.
Tonight his sword is bright again.
Tonight he’s mad as hell.
In the morning
Some fool will find what little dies
And wonder if he fell.
Ted Thompson, born a Connecticut Yankee, has published two books of poetry. Both received great reviews, earned meager sales, and are available on Amazon. He lives in a house he built of rock and stone with his beautiful wife, Mary, and his loyal dog, Tillacoultry. Thompson has no education.
