A Vindi Boy’s First Trip

[James E Probetts]

A Vindi Boy’s First Trip
(A further excerpt from
Boy on a Dolphin)
By John C Ryan


In Victoria Dock
They rested
Line after line
Rust-streaked and beautiful
Made glorious by size and bulk.
Salt weariness
Of plunging empires
Smelling of tropics
Limes
Spices
Black pan
Of greaser fare
Salted and sauced
With baccy and rum.

Stretched hawsers strain
Reeking restlessness
Aching to snort
Where nothing can find them.

Plucked heart of darkness
In star biting blackness
Shiver of loneliness
Rusting the sides.

Sighing for tattoo pricks
Loving in Dirty Dick’s
When Kate, Jane, or Margery
Crosses the bar.

Wind of the winches
Swing of the spar
Lashings of Mersey
To sweet Malabar.

The gangway leaned
Against the eager boy
Took him into the black bulk
That was his berth.

The pots in the galley
Were stacked to the deckhead
Plenty of soda
To sluice the deck down.

The Chief overseeing
The stacking and loading
Was Frying-Pan Smith
From the Orient Line.

His wild reputation
Preceded his signing
A ship can be fed
From an old frying pan.

If it can’t be cooked on a frying pan
It can’t be cooked!

Torpedoed and scuttled
From convoy to convoy
Adrift in the Arctic
Through war after war.

I’ve wrung more salt water
Out of my socks
Than you’ve ever sailed on!

The cooks they were mighty
Two massive Jamaicans
Who kept the pots piling
And nursed the stockpot.

They sent the young boy
On an errand of mercy
To fetch the glass nails
From Frying-Pan Smith

The boy was sent back
For the great rubber hammer
And told in the shower
His hangings were crook’d.

That if the condition
Of one hanging lower
Was not put to rights
It might stunt his growth.

He must go to the Captain
To have them both checked
For a handicapped sailor
Might bring them bad luck.

So up on the bridge
With his flags at half mast
The captain and mate
Checked his tackle for balance.

They asked him to cough
Pronounced with a flurry
A few days at sea
Would restore him to health.

The great engine started
The ship gave a shudder
The rhythm went straight
To the little boy’s heart.

Down Greenwich Reach
Past the Isle of Dogs
The moment was fixed
Like a star in the sky.

The wind rose to whisper
A metamorphosis
From Sheerness to Margate
Unchrisemed by salt.

Poseidon came snorting
The mad butting channel
To see a new child
On a brave dolphin’s back.

Bow biting restlessness of Biscay
Mast stuttering shake
In a plunge of breaking
Ship shuddering shiver
Corkscrew of straining
Pot, pan and kettle
In bedlam of galley.

Cooks groaning, boy greening
In a crutch-retch of pitching
Black-pan careering
To stuff the late watch.

Slip slop of sliding
From gash-bin to dumping
Plate rack and ruin
In rattle of days.

Vastness of ocean
When land spit is misted
Earth smell demolished
In buckets of storm.

World in a calming
Of silk lipping morning
The lap of her loving
Beyond the Azores.

The thrust of her throbbing
The warmth of her sunning
The lilt of her drift
In the sky of her sea.

The point of her balance
Held firm to the offing
Breeze kiss of shoulders
Now stripped to the waist.

The green boy was browning
On deck for the peeling
Of spuds by the barrel
For sea pie and stew.

A dag to the bridge
In the early sea misting
With tea for the helmsman
At pinking of dawn

Showed the whole panorama
From offing to nowhere
A chalice of sunshine
Where flying fish flopped.

From strap-up to bunktime
They peopled the hatches
The tiger, the peggy,
The cooks and the boy.

Woodbines would answer
A sparkle of stardust
Pinpoint the voyage
Of Venus and Mars.

They swung the wild lamp
Of their hardtack and longing
The lives of their shipwreck
The triumph of love.

Bar brawls in shanties
Ports for the homeless
Tenders of tenderness
Love with no price.

Sometimes the laughter
Would bubble the ocean
With dolphin and porpoise
In great streaks of light.

The swell in the wash
Of the wake of their discourse
Deepened the shelf
Of the little boy’s mind.

And they didn’t spare him
Though no sailor harmed him
A boy on a ship
Was the child of them all.

Dhobi days drifted
In buckets of calming
On knife-edge of wonder
The tropics were born.

Bermuda was herbage smell
Off the port bow.
Tang of lemon scratching salt
Wafted on wild blue of morning
Probing the startled heart
Plucking the sea boy
To meadows and tar
Claiming him for
A barefoot stamp
Over frizz of frost
In stiffness of grass.

World wanderers wooed
To wantonness
Led by the nose
In a sap-surge of sense
Raising the Adam
For Edens of Eves
When sun licks the salt
Off a land-scented breeze.

Shelter of palms on the furthest flung ridge
Greened in a whisper of tropical shore
Kingston Jamaica now firm in the glass
With cooks at the railings straining for more.

The boy now fixed in the far fo’c’stle head
Heard Port Royal bells ring under the waves
He thought of the Pit, brass cannon and spit
Cutlass of Blackbeard unfetter the slaves
Heard Captain Morgan belay Captain Blood
To throw the chest down with pieces of eight.

The winch gave a grunt, the hawsers were taut
The cooks jumped over to rush the dock gate
The ship nestled up and breasted the quay
Home was the sailor boy home from the sea.

[Gulliver]

Absolutely Fantastic,James!
Ive never heard that-I'm going to save,print and frame it.
It says so very much quite economically-and so evocative,too.
I'm quite moved Wow!-I've got goose-pimples.

Davey

[Reg Kear]

Ah, 'salt weariness' and 'plunging empires'. only a seaman would know the ghost of these sentiments, truly a mariner's poem.

Reg Kear.

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Hi James.
Well done mate. Flashes of ships, smells, and coal dust rising, saltwater from tears brought it all back.
All in one nostalgic poem
Cheers Des