Phantom of the Horizon

The sea was a fair maiden that day

Awash in the misty , salt sprayed finery that a bride wears on mornings such as these.

In her deep blues and greens she clung to the hull of my vessel as it breached yet another horizon.

I could feel her needy hands pulling me , beckoning me, begging me to stay, but this journey that I had embarked on had taken me without charts and compasses, through many merchant seas.

I could not commit to her alone.

I was adrift.

Alone without captain or crew, having no need for a wheel or rudder.

With only a cyclical current to guide me I had traveled for more than a century.

Thousands had seen me, off in the foggy distance or sailing through gales with my tattered sails flailing at the tempest.

Slipping tantilizingly close to castaways on deserted Islands, as they waved frantically from shore at my form on the sunny face if the deep.

My curse, I suppose is to never reach land. To never have my sails trimmed or have my anchor dropped in shangrila .

No.... Instead I am a vision of hopes unrealized, rescue not materialized.

The swaggering vagabond of the ocean, the stuff of pirate dreams and mermaid fantasy.

I am the phantom of the Horizon.