She sits in solitude by the bar,
In the only brass-railed tavern on the wharf
Of the lazy seaside town.
Some say she is the keeper's niece,
An orphaned wretch from a shipwrecked family,
An island of beauty amidst the coarse men,
Sea-hardened faces and rough hands.

As they whisper, the sailors watch,
Enthralled by this local goddess.
Her hair flows sinuously,
Cresting against her shoulder
Like waves lapping against the prow of a skiff.
Her sweet breath is the very wind
That furrows their sails and sets their course.
Her limbs, her smoothness, her poise,
Like the sculpted carpentry of a great schooner.

But her eyes, oh, her eyes,
In her eyes lurks the turbulent sea,
The power and surge of great waves,
Heaving breakers and twisting foam,
The promise of death after a blood-red sunrise.
Lost in her unfathomable grey eyes
The sailors envision their own doom
Dashed against the forecastle,
Swept clear of the deck during a typhoon.

The men sit wary of her, distant.
All the warm lacquered oak,
The firelight on smudged brass
Cannot dispel the cold reminder of danger
In her troubled swirling seas of grey.
And so at the bar she sits alone
Weighted with a sadness not her own
Submerged deep in her tumultuous eyes.