Mate’s Cabin
A poem by C. Robert Hilton.
This little cabin's twenty-eight years old.
How many human stories does it hold?
How many young men trying to make their pitch
Have grafted hard and made the owners rich?
How many Masters well beyond the brink
Have passed this way dissolving in their drink?
Who washed, spewed, bled in that small basin there,
And winked in the glass brushing his hair,
Anticipating what may be in store
If luck is with him when he goes ashore.
How much of love have these old bulkheads seen,
And how much lust and all the grades between?
And who sat here before me at this table,
And wrote to slim Felicity, fat Mabel,
The tax man, the insurance and the wife,
And what were their ideas of the sea life?
My great great grandson, if he goes to sea,
Will know the same as Captain Noah, and me.
©1997 C. R. Hilton
