Sent out the s.o.s. Call.
It was a quarter past four in the morning
When the storm broke our second anchor line.
Four months at sea, four months of calm seas to be pounded
In the shallows off the tip of Montauk Point.
They call them rogues; they travel fast and alone--
one-hundred-foot faces of God's good ocean gone wrong.
What they call love is a risk, to always get hit out of nowhere
By some wave and end up on your own.
A hole in the hull defied the crew's attempts, to bail us out.
It flooded the engine and radio, half-buried bow.
Your tongue is a rudder.
It steers the whole ship, sends your words past your lips,
Or keeps them safe behind your teeth.
But the wrong words will strand you, come off-course while you sleep,
Sweep your boat out to sea or dashed to bits on the reef.
The vessel groans; the ocean pressures its frame.
To the port I see the lighthouse through the sleet and the rain.
And I wish for one more day to give my love and repay debts,
But the morning finds our bodies washed up thirty miles west.
They say that the captain stays fast with the ship through still and storm.
But this ain't the Dakota; the water's cold. (So cold.)
Won