The Ode to the Outport

The whipping of the weeds on a crisp Autumn day

The perfume of nostalgia still lingers in the bay

The picks in the ground where an old house once stood

The boarded and forgotten, those that left when they could

I see in the distance, where the ocean carries on

We're chewed up and spit out like sailor's tobacco and sad songs

With a hawk and a scuff across the crimson cliff roads

We've been ingrained to go away, leave, and do what we're told

"For there's nothing to do but to wait for to die"

I often wonder if you've all tasted this salt and this sky

As the tide is pulled from the rocky shores by the moon

The slivered splints, brushed cobwebs, darkness enters too soon

For I've trekked beaches and shores from Panama's coast

Down to the sands of Australia, that I still hold so close

I found myself lost in limbo in the Adriatic sea

And drunk, I awoke in Bosnia where I set my soul free

All the while still writing narrative, prose, and song

About my forgotten homeland, worn shores, and the cursed fog

A love and a longing, editing that tale of despair

Of a livelihood bludgeoned after five hundred years

So what would you rather? Us kick off and die?

Watch us trade off for profit, what's left of our pride?

Open your eyes love, stand to shake off old sin

Protect the lands and seas, and never forget where we've been

Soon they will discover the mystery of our shores

For we must fight to hold on just a little while more

We have everything we need, "some day the sun will shine"

So haul across the damned curtains, we're about to go blind.