Today I learned that
ships passing in the night
occasionally make contact
Occasionally a lamplight is flashed
By the one sorry soul
keeping cold vigil overnight
while superior sailors sleep.
In the black-night murks,
that swell and carry
the load,
These barely-beacons
Are usually swallowed by
The latest undulation
The lonely light
flickers on and off
in half-hearted morse code,
a throwaway hello:
short, short, short, short
pause
short
pause
short
long
short
short
long
long
long
This is usually a lost cause
But sometimes,
just sometimes,
another lonely light will reply
It is such an uncommon thing
that
the fatigued mariners
tend to assume it’s a hallucination
Then they return to their
telescope view of the
darkness.
