Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Poetry 2019 | Page 31

To Fame Through Flames
Harrow International School Hong Kong, Mak, Myra - 10
The sea is still, the wind is light.
The sails are drapes a-fly.
The moon’s aglow and all alone,
The mast is proud and high.
There, sailors drink throughout the night,
And fall asleep at dawn.
But now the ship is set to sail,
“All hands on deck!” They yawn.
The quay is full to bid adieu
The sailors of Shanghai.
There, kin and children cry and weep
While others wave goodbye.
A cabin boy, so grim and glum,
Waves wistfully and blue.
For no one on the dock is his—
He joins the somber crew.
Two weeks of toil and nary a sail,
When suddenly they spied
A Jolly Roger, so they’d heard,
A flag to give berth wide.
The crew and captain fret and wept;
They could not up their glide,
For ballast bilge was treasure filled.
The foe pulled near beside.
And there by dawn the fight began
The pirates’ grapples tight.
The cabin boy foresaw their end—
No hope their present plight.
Then suddenly a picture rose,
A spark within his mind.
He grabbed a torch, a kindled flame,
Left all he had behind.
“Ahoy! Our ship! Go back! The flames!”
The foe to ship they fled;
The sailors could not fathom why—
Why they had not bled.
Then found they were bereft of boy—
They jerked round toward a sound.
They spied ‘their man’ with torch in hand,
With pirates all around.