Pome En Route Ome

The sea has many moods and wears as many skins

When tempestuous you see furrows upon her brow

But brave little boats endure the tossing and the pitching

With coloured peasant-cloths billowing upon their bows

 



I am not her tenant for I am merely passing through

As I soar over her steamy breath in the light of early morn

But though I am a sailor of the firmament of white and blue

I plead she does not consume me for I shall soon be gone

 

There are islands on her body that men have built from steel

With pipes that plunge to draw her black gold sap which feeds

All that moves upon this smoky world in vessel or wing or wheel

The myriad rigs, the deep fathomed digs, the portrait of our greed

 

But the men who work are as you and I pursuing a daily wage

I ferry these miners in sectors through clear and through cloud

I carry men, I carry women, the menial, the learned of every age

All temperaments and creeds, the burdened, the humbled and the proud

 

I am an offshore pilot and I am a prisoner upon the waves

Thus the salt and the rain are my daily fare as I take to the sky

A human trafficker if ye must, mothers and fathers my freight

Yet no affinity to water in my veins, a predicament I cannot deny

 

The ships and barges are my laden companions, I watch them from above

They say that akin to them when rotors stop my own toils will be done

And thus I bid farewell to the fishing boats trawling their treasure trove

May their helmsmen also see their bonny wives when the sun is finally gone

 

The shoreline sentinels, timeless islands, my beacons, my milestones home

The long finals to runway OneSix, or through Labohan's scenic Lane Four

They unfurl the asphalt carpet where this Cougar will be finally towed

Till another sunrise finds fishermen, captains and cargo parlaying offshore