The Old Captain

The old captain always said
that he wished to be buried at sea,
that the last thing he wished to hear
was the sound of sea gulls and sea waves,
waves breaking against his wooden boat
and not the shore.
He knew where he belonged.
When once a year he docked his ship,
and his sailor crew went raucously through the town,
he stayed behind,
and when they came back drunk,
they found him sitting by the shore,
looking at the moon far over the sea,
restlessly longing to be chasing it
over the sea,
and to come back never more.
They said he must be a mermaid's son,
that he must have been born in the sea,
that at midnight he returns to the sea
to visit his mother in the ocean swept wrecks,
in tumbling, crumbling wrecks of ships
that mermaids and sea lords have claimed,
reached up and grabbed from a still, calm sea
and crushed with sea seeded fingers
and barnacled fingernails.
And at midnight in lamplight,
they dropped his body feet first
into the blackness below,
and only the sound of a droplet falling
marked the return of the old man to his sea.
The sea which had never completely owned him in life had his very soul in death,
and locked it fast, far from heaven.
The body fell slowly, hair straight up,
arms and fingers welcoming fate,
and myriads of tiny fish watched him fall,
fish that would have shone brightly in sunlight
had there been sun, shone darkly in the dark.
And he fell faster, toes searching
for the soft ocean floor,
and great sharks circled around him,
bit off his clothes but left him untouched,
and he hit bottom in the slowness of dreams,
silt flying up all around his knees,
his knees giving way, letting him sit
on the ocean's grey floor
where he belonged.
He opened his eyes
to wait for the mermaids, and looking up
saw the white moon resting above him.