Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash

Mr. Christian has rallied the crew. They stomp my deck
in decisive clomps. In the salt, I whiff the expectant odor of gunpowder.
One barbarous cur
had the gall to claim I’m a blight on the sea, a speck
of grime on good God’s wet rolling world of infinite power.
I stir

in my morning bed, two-legged, no Ahab washed in blood,
not baptized backward in the nomine diaboli.
Respect tradition
like a church on a hill threatened by a whelming flood,
safe in a fair haven of rest, someday holy
when the mission

ends. The ship will return to port—I always say.
In a world where pirates bag the booty, mutinies
succeed unpunished,
and where landed men command the tattooed fray,
what place is there for gray hair culture on the sea,
some soul sweetly burnished?