fetch ’round th’world

We all have dreams, but at which point do they stop being dreams and start being plans and achievements? The furthest back that i can remember is when Hewitt invited Slacks and i up for New Year’s Eve, then later cancelled. Slacks and i had the time off work, and our road-trip vehicle prepared. We had to go somewhere.
We went to the city instead, where i met a person, who gave me a job, which introduced me to another person, who later introduced me to another person, which led to another job, where i met a sailor. This sailor indroduced me to another sailor, and to sea i went.

At that time i stepped away from dreams, and achieved one piece of me sailor-heart’s desire…

From there i met sailor upon sailor, and in the fullness of time (but not so long a time as all that) i met another sailor, a woman, who came to own me as no other had done before.
Now it’s hard to say, lads and lasses (tho’ i must confess, i dictate more to th’former than th’latter), when it was that we went wrong, tho’ if i was to guess, it came when we left the sea. Sea-legs were love-legs to we, and on th’hard we two did stagger. We were cast on land together, where things must have their appointed beginnings, and their appointed ends. In retrospect (always that the cunning teacher) my only real regret must be that i did not let her go th’sooner.

My sin it was to capture her; she is more wave than water, tho’ neither could i hold… She capsized me, as was wont to happen to a careless hand, setting a careless watch.

They say that in the Southern Ocean, the fetch does run th’world ’round, and in time, as wind and waves find their way eastwards, they have on occasion chance to run up upon themselves from behind; then there forms a wave so great, that none may stand before it.
There is no beginning at sea, says i, and no ending either. As creation calls it, first darkness, then water, and ever since, a wave ’round the world, before land or man or other fabulous animal. On land th’human animal is born and dies, but for th’sailors the sea.
Hewitt and Slacks have some idea of what beginning i claim, tho’ they cannot be my full heritage. But of my end, well… As this one wave does claim my heart, so it will be that the wind and sea claim my soul.
There is no better end for a sailor-song than that.

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