“The Hapless Sailor” song

(Song: written in 2005)

The Hapless Sailor

     by Dangerous Moug DeGrew

Allegro, but still elegiac, instrumental prelude C/F/G

1

Come people won’t you listen

To a story I would tell

About a hapless sailor

Who went on a ship

To take a trip

When he was only twelve

2

He thought that he would travel

For a year or maybe two

But thirty years went by 

Before he got back to

The place he’d left

When he had begun to roam.

Chorus 

He said that when this trip was o’er

He’d turn around and go back home

And never more would roam

He said that when this trip was o’er

He’d turn around and go back home

And never more would roam

He’d never roam

3

He often would remember

How he left the family farm

His mother in the kitchen

Father in the barn

And sister milking cows

4

And then he’d also think about

What it’d feel like getting home

How he’d walk in through 

That old screen door

And call the names

Of all the ones

He’d loved before he roamed

Chorus

He said that when this trip was o’er

He’d turn around and go back home

And never more would roam

He said that when this trip was o’er

He’d turn around and go back home

And never more would roam

He’d never roam

5

Then one glad day

When they drew near

The harbour lights of home

A pirate came acalling

For their ship to stand

And give him room

Or he would blow

Them all to kingdom come

6

The captain he fought bravely

And the sailors they did too

But when the day was done

The hapless sailor lay

Upon the deck

With all the crew

And none were going home.

Chorus

He said that when this trip was o’er

He’d turn around and go back home

And never more would roam

He said that when this trip was o’er

He’d turn around and go back home

And never more would roam

He’d never roam

Instruments

Dark Whistling

 Dark Whistling
   by The Worried Happy Whistler

          whistle while you work
          whistle while you work
          whistle while you work away
          whistle while you work 

Dear Reverend Sprundge,
Your assertions in the Hanover Review about the philistinism of my father, who left home (having had his eye accidentally punctured by his brother at such a young age and disliking farming) for the West Reserve for good to make a living on that side of the Red, I intend to challenge. You impute laziness and mental pallor to him for presuming permanently to turn his back on Steinbach, as if Steinbach were the New Jerusalem. Let me inform you better. 
     My father worked hard. He whistled when he worked. He whistled in the morning when he worked against time and was not getting ahead as planned. When he whistled he whistled shrilly, not in pleasure but in releasing pentupness. Being a myopic young teen, I naturally hated hearing him whistle because it made me see his walk as he did so. I’d clamp my hands over my ears. He walked briskly when he whistled, short, quick steps, because he wanted to have been on the road by now and was already an hour late and the best sales were mornings. It might have been okay if he’d been well-proportioned, like grandpa Zacharias, but he displayed all the disfavourabilities of Grandpa Reimer’s genes. Short torso, shorter legs, somewhat bow-legged, trousers just that much too short, a bit of white mustache and thinning gray hair, clothing (except for the white shirt) always in browns; caramel, chocolate, fawn, dun, coffee, mahogany. From shoes to jacket. And his blue eyes. 
     Henry James wrote a story about an entirely different sort of person in The American. In it, if my memory serves me right, a young man lives in a European country such as Italy where he becomes convicted of his own oddity, his preoccupation with money instead of things refined. Things refined includes a long list, things mercenary a short one. 
     This reminds me, before I set out these lists for you, of the thirtyish woman who acquired a handsome new male companion. His quirky behaviour did in time grow into a concern for her and she began to worry that maybe he lacked, shall we say, a certain fullness of intellectual strength. She deliberated at length by what means to address this concern, delicate matter that it was. Certainly not by direct inquiry, nor yet by accusation. Nor really by any emperical means, as in reading scholarship dedicated to the matter, and not either, strictly speaking, by lengthy observation. Finally it came to her. She turned to him in bed one morning and asked, “Duayne, when you went to public school, were you collected by a long bus or a short one?”
     Now, James himself was a short man, hardly topping five feet. There are cultures where that would not have seemed unusual, say in Korea, Japan, or China, or even in the Andies. But in Texas where he lived most of those years before his exodus from the American scene, a man could hardly be a man unless five foot eight or more. James wrote about tall men, tall men who agonized at length over matters of depth, matters such as, for instance, O’Brien and the question of his marrying the British girl in Venice where he had met her in an outdoor apparel shop and begun, despite his foreboding, to obsess over her. O’Brien had never been able to force himself to love anyone, especially someone whom he suspected of caring for his wealth, and he was a wealthy man, scion of a Wall Street financial empire. The tall buildings which housed his father’s offices and his own future living hardly concerned him those days, travelling to the continent as if he were a prince during the reign of James I.
     O’Brien lost the girl and failed to immediately find a replacement to satisfy the longing that plagued him. Instead of returning to his home country, he lived alone now along the Veridicci and wrote cloying letters to friends and family while copiously drinking the wine already infamously associated with Venice, a white named Blanco Savis, roughly translated as white saviour and suggesting in James’s narrative his protagonist‘s unrecognized (that is, by himself) preoccupation with matters religious. Much in the same general vein of preoccupation as my father whistling in the car garage while loading his Ford Fairlane station wagon with Rawleigh products for that day’s sales, anticipating his visits to farmyards around and about St. Joseph, St.Jean, Letellier or Plum Coulee, where in the morning, if he did get a good, unhindered start, he might just be the early bird catching the worm. The men would be outdoors doing chores and working fields and wives cleaning up breakfast, still half asleep, already contemplating about lunch sandwiches and supper, knowing that physical work would bring her men inside wild-eyed with hunger. His knock on their rural doors was a welcome reprieve. Him not knowing his own thoughts.
     My father was an entirely admirable man, neither given to disloyalty nor, for that matter, passion. What he received at home on his return from the days’ sales at about 10 PM was plenty for that busy spirit of his, a busy spirit that slipped the traces of stress through a timely whistling, unless of course the recipient of his evening attentions suffered from some melancholy, a glitch that happens periodically to all good wives, short and tall, quiet and loud, friendly and ricocheting. Father struck me always as a modest man of small means and admirable appetites, not given to finding reprieve from hunger in places that were not meant for him. He worked hard all his life, he played horseshoes once or twice a year, he ate well until he got diabetes, and he never spent undue time with children. He got by marvellously, and no looking back over his own life after it was nearly over. I wish he had been able to spend a year or so of it in Italy where new ideas might have set him whistling another tune.
     To make a long story short, I will just conclude by advising all of you who have not yet read James, to do so immediately without delay. His novels bear the stamp of genius and are a must for every man or woman who considers themselves educated. Good luck and all the best in your endeavors.
Sincerely,
Walter Whistler

Sunken Treasure

 Song written in 2009

(In G/C/D/A7)

Sunken Treasure

     by Walbert Brickworks

Wicked weary world

What’s your goal

Where’s your gold

Where’s your shame

I find the game of sink

And swim is much to blame

Playful busy world

Swim in shoals

Sinks of gold

Hearts aflame

Love is just a game

And love is hard to tame

Chorus

Love is hard to tame

And lovers all have names

That’s the part that leaves us feeling free

We swim out to the brink

And then begin to sink 

And pray that Joan of Arc will ride

And put us in the pink

Thoughtful fighting world

Takes its toll on the whole

Soldiers lame 

Women laid down recklessly 

In leaky shame

Mindless calling world

Make your roll

Give your soul

Hearts inflamed 

Taking aim 

At inky blackness down the lane

Chorus 

Love is just a game

And lovers all have names

That’s the part that leaves us feeling free

We swim out to the brink

And then begin to sink

And pray that Joan of Arc will ride

And put us in the pink

Professors

 Professors 
     by D R. (Herr Doktor)

Professors come back from wherever they’ve been (in Macedonia for a conference on cuneiforms, at a conference in Key West because of a resurgence of interest in all things Hemingway or in Sweden attending a sacred music workshop), tanned and determined to repeat such travels (on the university dime) again next summer. They notice the long-legged students in their classes smelling of bath powder. Of course, I am too old for them, the professors say to themselves, but also think, I am, however, interesting. Consider the shear daring and distance of my travels. 
     Professors perpetually work at their computers, their office doors open. Take professor Hackles here. He’s always in front of his screen and keyboard busy doing something, visible to all passers by. Now and then he stops keyboarding and engages in a discussion with a student, or maybe with a colleague passing his door. In these instances, though his observed voice naturally is quite soft, it now takes on the cadences of authority. Usually, alone, he is a rather silent and shy, but, because public here, he now gives out with loudness punctuated by strongly stated phrases such as, “you know what I mean,” “without question,” “an egregious failure of the imagination” and “does that help?”
     He will retire in two years. He sports a tan even now, in February. Moving about now and then, his slim figure presses forward down the hall with purpose. He invariably climbs the six floors of stairs to his office. His white hair makes him resemble Walt Whitman. He teaches Romantic literature. His door proclaims that he is,
                 Dr. Gregory Happles
                           English
Underneath that the posted timetable reads,
            Romantic Literature 04.446
                  Wordsworth 04.746
     Professors and their wives give parties in their cold (in winter) three-storied, hundred-year-old homes for students in second year or later. They provide quality wine and imported beer if the group does not exceed ten. Or, if they are Cambridge or Oxford educated professors, they serve homemade wine and beer. 

Way Up in Heaven

Note: the following piece thinks of my mother’s preference in hymn genre. She loved the evangelical hymns best. This song intends to honour her memory.

Way Up in Heaven

     by the Singsong Sinner

1

Way up in heaven my saviour waits for

His many children, to come to him

His arms wide open, his warm heart beating 

Eagerly waiting, to bring us in 

Chorus 

He is waiting, and he is watching 

And he is counting the days away

He is smiling, at thoughts that he’ll meet me

And say hello, sir, come right this way

2

Twelfth century mystics, those holy women

Like St. Teresa, love pure and clear

Jesus their lover, no earthly other

Could feed their hunger, or bring them cheer

Chorus 

He is waiting, and he is watching 

And he is counting the days away

He is smiling, at thoughts that he’ll meet me

And say hello, sir, just walk right in

3

Way up in heaven, beyond the blue sky 

Beyond the white clouds, beyond the hill

There sits my saviour, in all his splendour 

Patiently waiting, to bring us in 

Chorus 

He is waiting, and he is watching 

He is counting the days away

He is smiling, at thoughts that he’ll meet me

And say hello, sir, you’re welcome here

And say hello, sir, you’re welcome here. 

Wounded

 Wounded     

by Dad Doug

We were visiting Marty’s parents on Thackeray in Portage la Prairie. I have no specific memories of that day except for this one. I heard screaming from the garage in which Peter (father-in-law) had recently parked his early sixties Oldsmobile, maroon, shiny, beautiful with a ton of chrome. Even the bumpers shone in their overwhelming chrome thereness. I (and likely the others) rushed to the side door that opened into the garage. There was Jess, poor, poor girl, lying on the cement by the car’s front tire, curled up in a ball, screaming and clutching her head. Blood gushed out between her fingers. The floor already had a red puddle underneath her head. I ran over and sat down trying to get her to answer me but she just continued screaming. Finally I picked her up and began rocking her, holding her tight to my chest. Eventually she gasped out, “bumper.” I looked over at it and saw a blood spatter on the sharp bumper edge. We got her hand from her face somehow and saw where the wound was. It looked raw and ugly. Then she finally began to speak between sobs and said that she’d been running and tripped headlong, landing against the bumper with her head (I immediately noticed that the bumper protruded a good two inches outside the car itself and had very sharp, unfiled edges). We held a wet cloth with ice against the cut, got her into our car and quickly drove her to the Portage hospital where she was sewn up with, I believe, 9 stitches. O, the pain she must have felt! How I hurt with her!  It is so hard when your kids get an injury and are in such pain! Very hard for them and us. 

Dorky’s Daydream (cont)

Dorky’s Daydream (Continued)
     By Dougie Dorkheimer

Except that the tempest had not brought death! Here, in the darkest hour of permanent separation, I saw my friend returning to me from the dead. And, as if attached to his underside, another friend, a cabinet shaped like a coffin that, in the ship’s kitchen, had protected perishables, from beetles, vermin, mice and rats. Waterproof and sealed against moisture, it now nimbly buoyed up Quebecette and myself. Lack of warmth troubled us not at all, sailing as we did in  temperate climes. But fatigue proved otherwise. Taking each our shirt and knotting one wrist into a sleeve, we looped the other through an iron handle found on each side of the “coffin” and bound the two shirts together over its top. Then, making sure of the knots, we found ourselves able to surf alongside our conveyance without any of the expenditure of labor that would have been necessary had we simply tried to balance on top of it. 
     With night falling and the waves mountains, our prospects steadily bleakened. The fearsome hurricane bore us nor’easterly into the open sea, ever farther away from all possibility of rescue. Ahead lay unknown prairies of water where not a ship dared sail, seas that cartographers had never yet seen or surveyed. Doomed, we clung to our only refuge, our mutual company, relieved not to have to spend our final hours alone. That small consolation at least was ours. Never had Christian felt more grateful during all his dire most wanderings than did we to our Lord Jesus Christ for his goodness and mercy. 
     Two days we drifted tempest tossed without food or water. The third day dawning, we perceived in the faint distance a sight that suddenly cheered us considerably and began to suggest the possibility of survival. What initially looked like a fine black line on the horizon, began after some hours to show an unevennesses that, even though glimpsed amidst the wind’s and wave’s bellowing, must be hills and mountains. O land! O ahoyness! 
     But knowing that the land must still be many miles distant, our spirits sank deeper than before. As when a storm bound sailor lost at sea  sees ahead a sudden great outcropping of land and, tying his frail craft to it, climbs up and lays him down to sleep, what terrible new hopelessness overwhelms him when he sees in the morning that he has anchored to the scaly sides of leviathan. So we, having no material for sails nor any paddles but only our prayers that the wind would continue to blow us in that direction, fell into the deepest and blackest despair. 
     But then a miracle. To our great good fortune, we found ourselves moving, though ever so  slowly, closer to that far off shore and eventually, during the night, we heard a crash of waves on rocks. Fearful though we were of that turbulence, of crashing on the rocks that would most certainly destroy our vessel and ourselves, destiny seemed determined to land us there amid the roaring and the tumult.
     Eventually we found ourselves close enough to the Island that our feet began to scrape against coral and rocks and with great effort we held onto our craft, forcing our way in the utter darkness against the powerful cross currents to higher ground. Our good fortune held. It was not on rocks or cliffs that we landed but in a small declevity with a smooth bottom and sand under our feet. The beach on which we now lay down to rest seemed heaven sent. We slept exhausted. In the morning, we woke to the sound of the birds and the magnificent sight of trees and grasses. The sun beat down on our wet and weary bodies and we wept in gratitude to our creator for his wondrous kindness to us, to us, these hapless, weary and undeserving insects. 
     When we had rested and when the sun had dried us, we rose to inspect our surroundings. To our great surprise, we saw footsteps in the sand. Hope and fear filled us. Maybe these marks had been made by our companions! Maybe we would find some of them alive who had, like us, reached safety. We followed them some distance and eventually heard voices. Fearfully, silently, not knowing if these might be unfriendly inhabitants of the island we made our way forward with care, then in the distance we beheld, to our surprise, the king, the king’s brother Antonio and Antonio’s friend Sebastian standing in a small group just out of reach of the waves. We helloed and shouted and made our presence known to them and soon found ourselves embracing in awe of the good fortune of meeting once again. How grateful we were that our maker had seen fit to save at least a few of those on the ship besides ourselves .
     We found Antonio and Sebastian, however, bitterly complaining about their state. They would not see, nor could they see, anything good about what had happened to the ship and crew. O the misfortune! O the work of the devil! O the misery of separation from city and court! O the wickedness of some member of the crew who, like proverbial Jonah, doomed the good ship because of his flight from God! I wished to hear no more such vitriol so I drew the king aside and spoke to him of the mystery round about us.
     “Look at our clothing, your Highness. Do  these not seem to you to be new and fresh”? I entreated. “The many days of our voyage soiled them but they seem to have undergone a strange transformation, an unexpected purification. And, look, all around us. Is it not intensely beautiful and green and perfumed? This must be a magical isle! Never have I felt such newness, as if I had just been recreated. I wonder if this place is blessed. Maybe it is our fortune and not our fate that we have landed here.”
    Antonio and Sebastian, wandering nearby, had overheard and they would have none of this! An ordinary sailor should not appear unsolicited before royalty, let alone dare to address the king himself! That silenced me, but the king hushed them in no uncertain terms and bade me speak openly and without fear. I did that with some misgivings for I knew that making enemies of them would likely prove dangerous to Quebecette and myself. For now they held their peace. 
     Scouring the beach for any possible wreckage from our ship occupied the following days. At first we discovered little in the way of materials with any utility for our needs. But then, on the second day, in a small bay a nautical mile from the place we had landed, we chanced upon a tidal cave in which lay a heap of items deposited there by the sea’s currents. Hurrying down, we examined our good fortune and found it to contain clothing, hogsheads of wine, a large sealed cask of butter, four large bags,10 stone each, waxed and sealed tight against water, of flour and strangely, for we had none of us been apprised of their existence on the ship and which must have belonged to a hoard intended for the use of only the captain himself (he being a man of great girth and stoneweight), two barrels of dried and salted herring, two hogsheads of tobacco (containing also, we later found, a quantity of tobacco seed with which we were able to propagate our own that we dried and cured and found as flavourful as any purchased to home), four hogsheads of small beer, a quantity of dried lemons, limes, prunes, raisins, apples, pears, persimmons, carrots, beans, rice  and onions to the tune of one half tonne weight and a variety of other succulent edibles. We rejoiced more than anything at the prospect of making and eating bread! The carpenter’s chest also had come to rest here during the night and inside we found hammers, axe heads, adzes, saws, files, chisels, line, rope, twine, nails, mingles and various other metal tools that would surely prove a great boon to us in our present state of abandonment.
     Antonio and Sebastian refused to transport any of the items, citing (to each other but in voices clearly audible to myself and Quebecette) their aristocratic heritage. The king made no such defence of laziness but, with a will and a strong back, and without a moment’s delay, contributed his person to the enterprise. He, Quebecette and I hove to and began to carry with a will.  After many return trips during many days all of the foods, tool items and utensils were safely stored under tarpaulins up in the tree line. 
     Next (since sleeping rough in the rain under dripping leaves and accompanied by insects of varieties and kinds unknown in civilized realms appealed to us not a bit) we began to construct a shelter of logs that the three of us felled in the forest and wrestled to a spot on a cliff with a wonderful prospect out over the sparkling sea. The forest provided us in the meantime with fresh fruit, apples, oranges, apricots, mangos, and coconut and eventually also grapes in great abundance. We had landed in paradise, it seemed to us, for where else in the world would one be able to live in such easy comfort with food aplenty and shelter made available from nature’s largesse? Each night our little group prayed and sang hymns and gave thanksgiving to our Maker who had saved us from the dark and the deep, from the depths of that despair we’d felt, adrift on the sea.
     The house and the fireplace finally completed, we had only a sleeping arrangement to ponder. Eventually we all decided on a large two-tiered bunkbed and quickly constructed it. Top and bottom bunk each measured 7 feet In length by 5 feet in width. These were covered with the skins of animals that we trapped and hunted with lines and spears. The king, royalty, deserved the right of sleeping alone on the lower tier. Sebastian, Antonio, Quebecette and I shared the upper tier, sleeping across rather than along the bed. When one of the four of us needed to turn over during sleep, perforce all the rest of us turned as well. This worked very well without trouble, outside of the king’s sonorous snoring that had us whispering comparisons to jungle beasts, avalanches, drowning multitudes or collapsing castles. 
     But, after eleven years, the day did finally come when sadness settled on our happy isle. My Quebecette grew ill and, wasting away for want of appetite, weakened quickly and died. Our hearts broke, for his kind, considerate, tireless friendship had made us all deeply love him. It was then, after bidding him farewell with sung hymns and sincere prayers while committing him to God and ground, that we began to plan for the eventual inevitable interment of all of us when our times would come, as they surely must! We carved a fine six foot cross (emblazoned with his beloved name) and erected it with ceremony at the head of his grave, simultaneously constructing similar crosses with each our names carved on the horizontal board. These we erected next to each other in a straight row, looking for all the world as if they were awaiting the arrival of company. The placement of these were determined by a person's height. Next to Quebecette’s (the tallest of us all at six foot eleven inches) was mine, for I stood six feet eight and a quarter inches. Then came Sebastian’s, who spanned five feet three inches, followed by Antonio’s, five feet and one half inch and, last, the king, whose height we had solemnly promised never to speak aloud. In time both the king and Antonio also passed on and left only Sebastian and myself to live through many more lonely  years, during which time the hope of rescue became little more in us than the faintest picture, the vaguest inkling, sometimes briefly flirting through our minds like ghosts of forgotten friends.”
     That ended Dorky‘s tale, and nary a dry eye in his whole company. Even Dorky, who had recounted his adventures on the island more times than he could remember, could be seen dabbing at his eyes now and then while he spoke. A clamouring arose among those assembled there who called out the obvious question with increasingly insistent voices until Dorky himself raised his hand for silence. He spoke now with a wink saying that the story of his eventual return to our Emerald Isle would have to wait for another occasion because at that moment his thirst overwhelmed his desire for the completeness of and the harmony of a proper ending. And thus it was that a reconvening at the Wave and Isle produced Dorky’s desired refreshment, paid for by everyone except the man himself