by Marshall Jamison
The captain’s name was Amos
although he was never heard
to answer to it,
except when he was at home
with the woman he adored
and thought of as a lady,
which she was.
Grizzled, grey but eagle-eyed,
and forty-six years old, he looked
nearer sixty,
after twenty years of sea service
to the American West African Line.
Seaman, Bos’n, Mate and finally
Master.
Torpedoed in forty-one,
naked off Madagascar.
A man to trust your life to
when crossing the North Atlantic
six times, fifty-five or so
war-torn years ago.
