Margot and me
 (cousins of a sort) 
orphaned for a week
and shanghaied
to serve as crew
on the sloop Blue Lucy  
for a Captain Bligh aunt   
who'll deliver thirty lashes of words 
then soothe the wounds 
with compresses of affection.  

Mornings we are drilled 
on marriage of wind and sail. 
Afternoons we dutifully man jib and mainsheet, 
taking turns to cry "Helms Alee"  
to come about  'neath aching blue sky 
in a giant bathtub of toy boats.   

Come night,  
rewarded with grapes to savor 
beneath luscious boughs of bougainvillea, 
then tucked, sea dog-tired, 
into twin beds, where 
lulled by fog's silence and keening horn  
I gaze upon my crew mate and think I love her 
as much as a ten-year-old can.  

Time served, 
we are released from bondage  
with payment hugs and compensation kisses  
and shipped home to families 
a thousand miles apart 
taking only sunburn, taste of salt air 
and memories 
to hold us for the unlikely time 
we meet again. 

Written March, 2015

A grand niece of my Uncle Phil, Margot wasn’t a true cousin. In hindsight, I realize now that my Aunt Evelyn — hosting Margot for a week and worried she’d be bored — arranged with my mother to have me shipped down to Balboa as an almost-same-age companion. Evelyn provided us two children with an amazingly structured “sailing school.” In the morning there was classroom instruction around the dining room table. In the afternoon was the actual sailing in the harbor, first on a Sabot (a small sailing dinghy) borrowed from a neighbor, then on the Blue Lucy, where rotating roles as pilot and crew were sharply defined. This nautical education was so rich that it’s stuck with me to this day. I haven’t sailed much since then, but every time I have those lessons I received as 10-year-old have come back to serve me. That whole week has similarly stuck with me, Thus why one day I was compelled to write this poem about it.