At the harbor, the ship awaits,

gently rising and falling on the tide.

Double masted, a trading vessel,

bound for a distant foreign land.

In bright painted letters on the prow,

a name, a breathing soul bestowed 

to a being of wood and metal.

The crew assembles on the dock,

the captain barks orders at the men.

They swiftly board the rocking ship,

lower the great white sails, billowing.

With cheerful faces and farewells 

to their families standing at the pier,

they lift anchor, unmoor, cast off.

The ship at last leaves the harbor

and sails outward, out to open sea,

slowly diminishing with every mile

until it is a flickering image on the horizon,

and all at once, it is gone, vanished,

swallowed by the unfathomable distance.

When the ship returns,

in a few months, or years,

it will no longer be crewed by those

who were aboard when it departed,

but by other men, other faces,

other hearts, dark and scarred

by stormy seas, by wrathful gales,

by lost shipmates, by broken bones,

by hunger and thirst, by solitude,

by the endless tide of time.