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Neptune's Neighbors
By CRISTEL HASTINGS
In shadowed glens they wait beneath the waves,
Darting like furtive arrows through the gloom,
Haunting the ghostly hulls that lie at rest—
Old slanting decks that settled to their doom.
Strange shapes are here, patrolling somber depths.
Peering through portholes that once framed the sun.
Nosing the keels that lie in sanded graves—
Good ships that Neptune gambled for—and won.
The silent avenues on ocean floors
Are harbor for dead dreams and sodden hulls
Where bells are mute and footsteps sound no more
On ships that once raced convoys of gray gulls.
No more will pennants whip the flying breeze
Nor winds go roaring down a funnel's throat,
For here they lie, of worlds something apart,
Forgotten by all things that are afloat.
