First, a poem for your amusement:

PORTS

Morning was full of sun, as hot and golden
as Madras curry, the sky as deep as oceans,
and the ocean as deep as eternity.

The wind wrote messages across the sails,
wrote with the wings of seabirds, dipped in salt,
of harbor just beyond my world's edge.

Every port will have its name, its face,
as familiar as yesterday, as full
of promise as the dawn -- the wharfs, the taverns,

the women of the darkened, winding ways.
Ah, the women -- their names and faces fade,
fade like the ebb tide on those distant shores

called home. Will I find the arms of either
at voyage's end? They are the dreams of star-filled
watches and songs half-heard upon the night.

And night is deeper than oceans, deeper yet,
and blacker than the pepper of Malabar,
spread before the buyers in the market.

Stephen Brooke (c)2009

And, second, a mention that I've been publishing a small onlne literary magazine, Peripheral Vision, for a year now and am always open to submissions (non-paying, of course! grin ) and new readers. That's at http://peripheralvisionmag.com . Thanks.