THE SHIP OF MEMORY
Copyright © 1998 Van Wood
There’s a ship of which I’m the Captain and I often sail far and wide.
But, unlike other ships, I need not depend on the wind or the sea or the tide.
I sail on the Ship of Memory and return to the days of the past, where again I see how it used to be on the shores that I once passed.
Sometimes, I see myself as a child, too busy at play to believe
That someday the Ship of Time would come and I would have to leave.
To never return – or could I? Could it ever possibly be? That I could return to the Land of my youth on the Ship of memory.
Oh yes, the familiar faces that I knew yesterday. Sometimes we meet, sometimes we greet. But never can we stay.
You see, this ship must keep sailing…never long is the anchor cast.
So, one we sail, as we stand by the rail and visit again the past.
Sometimes, I find it is stormy. And then, I begin to recall
That some of the seas I’d known before had never seen calm at all.
But almost always there is a harbor which seems to be so near,
And I wonder why I had sailed on by and had never anchored here.
Sometime, I take others with me - usually much younger that I.
And we sail away to yesterday to explore the open sky…that is filled with a million visions of the way it used to be…
On another day far, far, away…on the Ship of Memory.
But now my friends, I must leave you for I hear that distant bell
That seems to call to one and all…to where? I cannot tell.
You see, you must captain your own ship and that’s the way it must be,
As we sail away to yesterday on the Ship of Memory.