Auckland Poetry.com

In the inner disused docks she was tied up and abandoned,
fifty years old now and looking it, the Greek owners were
trying to sell her, if a daft person bought her now, it must
be for love. It is twenty years since I stood on her deck
the Greeks are great seamen but shipping is business not silly
romance on the high seas. I asked the guard by the gangway
if I could come onboard, he wore a baseball cap and had lived
in New York, “ you can buy her for a dime,” he had joked
On her bridge I stood, though I could feel her valiant heart
vibrating through my feet, from the glum north Atlantic to
the smiling Indian Ocean, in fair weather and in raging
storms; never had I been afraid that she would sink beneath
the waves. “Buy her for a dime.” Sentimental fool, she’s a rusty
old bucket now and not worth a penny for my thought.