Ken Lambourne in The Home

My friend Ken spent twenty-odd years at sea.How we would laugh at his exotic talesOf losing the mail in far off Fiji,Or watching rich widows slip off the rails

Escorted by oily-sleek gigolosCruising the seas of the sad and lonely.But now, bounded in a nut shell he goesFrom room to room not knowing how to be.

‘I look down and the sea seems to draw me.’Maybe just like old Ahab with his whaleI said, but he laughed and did not seeMy clever-clever reference to that tale.

He was bright though, an old grammar school boySo proud of his French and poshly-toned Deutsch.I remember a sun-drenched walk from WhitbyDown to Ruswarp, when he vowed to launch out

From an iron-ruled Bank to the oceanFlowing freely round the only world we see.When he’d seen those ships he had a notionTo escape the bone-dry Bank, flee to sea

Where time would not cheat him with its cheap ploy:A few lean minutes for the day’s fat paunch.But an ocean of time dreamed by the boyCame to the man from one enlightened hunch.

But now he’s firmly in that shell, I seeWhichever room he’s in I still will failTo find the boy and man I knew to be –That lovely soul who left the Bank to sail.