The Last Adventurer - Adrian Bott

No heavy seas delayed him, but traffic, trains and fog.
No weeks in icy darkness, finger-cutting salt spray but the busy lights of road and rail and terminal bobbed round him.
A short trip this, a day adventure and he returns clutching contracts, contacts, linking networks and a good deal hauled in.
Later, on his desk the catch of scattered cards flash with owners’ details, corners sharp and fresh;
Their embossed letters soon tapped safely into reports and notes and action plans.

An ocean past on creaking deck, numb red hands finished packing the icy flapping harvest;
Raw hands that now long for healing sun and warm days at Cobo.
The Adventurer dreams as the boat groans homewards.

In Spring he had started building.
Fresh wood sawn and dragged over grass, hammered and glazed; they worked as a team.
Gently pushing in the glass he balanced on high white timbers and surveyed the fields to Town and back to choppy West coast.
He recalls the careless moment as the pane slipped and red drops fell from his palm anointing the sawdust, bread-crumb fresh, below his dangling legs.
He gazes at his hand and with a mild Norman oath presses his mark on the gable.
What he has built will now provide for his family but there is one last adventure where black sea and sky meet.

Tap, tap – the money has moved, the deal is done and the Adventurer reclines.
The towering Sunday supplements slip and scatter on foreign marble floor.
Startled, he looks out from the conservatory down smooth striped grass to the paddock and beyond,
Where a sea of brambles are tugging down a skeleton of tired, paint-flecked bones;
Frozen across a sea of years, the fog bank swallows the laden keel.

Adrian Bott