My Poems

My Sea Chest

Outside the chest is torn leather, tough with age.

Metal pins still holding it all together,

More pins form the letters J.W. on the lid.

This ancient box is black with damage done by the sea,

Obvious in the way the leather is frayed.

Worn hinges have long lost the first cover of metal,

Creating a college of black and gold.

When you open the lid,

The smell of fresh, salty air goes onto your tongue and into your lungs.

It’s like listening in a sea shell with sea gulls crying in your ear.

Inside this worn, old box,

Is musty with dust lines where a

Feather duster couldn’t reach them.

Dark and soundless,

The perfect place to hide from prying eyes and harsh words.

You can feel the tipping of the ship as if you were on it.

It’s tempting to stay here forever.

Your thoughts are the things that matter here,

And the sailor who kept a diary

Felt the same connection.

But he has long gone.

The dreams of my sea chest

Is that it will go travelling once more.

Overseas and oceans with the rhythm of the ship,

Rocking it like a baby in a cradle.

A sailor with white shirt and tough boots,

Packing it with a telescope, a map and a feeling of adventure.

It wishes to be a travelling companion, a best friend,

A person who could talk to the sea chest,

Keep it alive.

It wants that sailor to take it everywhere;

In a bond closer than friendship.

If I gave my sea chest to you, my friend would be gone.

A hole in my heart, ever gaping wider.

You would not understand it.

How could you get inside it and discover its secrets?

How could you feel its lonely rhythm?

You couldn’t.

But I can.

I can feel it, the similar wants in our hearts,

To be able to be free, to go adventuring,

And all the while, have each other for company.

I can confide in it with all by problems,

And it will reply with strength and dreams.

My sea chest wants someone who can feel it.

If I gave my sea chest, you wouldn’t understand it.

Without my sea chest, I am lost.

A friend has been ripped out of my life.

Now, I cannot run my fingers along its old edges and listen to its secrets.

Now, I cannot tell my hopes and fears to it and I have no one to lean on.

Now, I must keep my feelings trapped inside with no place to go.

I wonder if it feels the same way with no one understanding it either.

I have a chest-shaped hole in my heart,

That only it could fill.