Apples rotting beneath the trees. Teardrop jewelled spider’s webs on the washing line. And in the distance ships lost in the fog out at sea.
Autumn was here, and not even Claire declaring that there’s no such thing as ghost ships could spoil Agnes’s mood.
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Notes:
1. Written on July 27th and August 26th, 2023
__________The ship sailed into the harbour, empty and dead. No sign was there of struggle, but no sign was there of life.
And the people of the town, rather than worry about the mystery of whatever calamity had occurred, had to worry instead about whether they would be made to take the blame.
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Notes:
1. Written on July 3rd, 2019
__________Beyond the ocean, past the known, out upon the unseen sparkling seas, there travels a silver ship, its sails spun from golden thread, its oars carved from bone.
It is crewed by the people it rescues from the depths – the lost and the lonely; the imprisoned and the condemned; the innocent proclaimed guilty by the guilty; the free enslaved by those that talk, always, of freedom; the dead that should not have died; the living that could not save them, no matter how much they tried.
And it seeks out others, too, across the waters of the world. These people it does not save. It leaves them to drown, their ships sunk, their crimes finally punished, their names forever now forgotten.
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Notes:
1. Written on August 8th, 2018
__________In seven ships they sailed out across the sea to search for new lands to conquer.
The King’s ship sank first, struck by lightning in a storm, followed soon by the Lords’ vessel, and the Ladies’ too, both of which were lost to the waves of the tempest that raged on and on through the night.
After that a silence that stretched out across the days.
The soldiers’ ship went next; in the calm after the storm, with no wind to move their sails, mutiny smouldered, civil war took, and up it all went in a blaze of self-destruction, death and despair.
The priests’s ship crashed upon hidden rocks. The merchants’ vessel was waylaid by pirates.
All that was left of the fleet now was the ship of slaves, of servants, of maids.
They came soon to land and settled quietly there. In the years that followed, it was agreed that nothing of value had been lost upon the journey, and much indeed had been gained.
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Notes:
1. Written in August 2016
2. And re-written many times since
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Notes:
1. Drawn on March 12th, 2019
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