The Casting Up of the Bested Sailors of a Sunken Ship
By Ed Pacht
I heard slivers of a harpy's tune,
lilting, luminous, distant in the mist,
in the stillness of the lackluster grey
of a leaden sky whose ebony smudges
seemed endowed with darksome portent
of a storm that soon would burst its bonds,
releasing roaring winds and pounding rains,
and bring to an end the carefree voyage
undertaken with my peers upon a sunny day.
I heard the faint, appealing singing,
and by it thought to find a sheltered cove,
some safety on terrestrial shores,
but the island haven that I sought
was miserly in granting refuge to the lost,
and my vessel on the rocks was broken,
spewing forth all that were on board,
and as we landed in that land of singing,
those that sang, revealed in their full stature,
caught and ate each one that landed,
sparing only me to tell the tale.
The Sunken Ship
By John Nichols
The luminous ghosts of Fortune’s peers
Now reside only as smudges
Upon the casements of slimy portholes
That sink in silt ‘neath the pounding waves.
Slivers of beams from that sunken ship
Float in utter night, lackluster, carefree;
The miserly hold grips its gold,
Casting up naught but a harpy’s tune:
A siren’s call from the deep.
Those ghastly bested beings rise
From their deep sheltered sleep;
Their ebon eyes luminous in the wreck,
Their terrestrial forms distant and gone,
Endowed with new souls, wise
And carapaced hosts of the deep.
The lilting cadence of their
Alluring song, the shriek of banshees,
Drive the soul to burst its bonds
And dive deep into the well of mystery
Where all men stand at full stature.
By Dior Hartje, Grade 9
The sunken ship has burst its bounds, sheltered in the ebony.
Carefree smudges and distant pounding endowed the harpy’s song.
Terrestrial slivers have cost the giant its full stature.
Its lackluster peers watch, miserly
At the beauty’s casting up of its final luminous rays,
Attempting again to catch the lilting air.