Been thinkin’ about…the ships and the stars

“I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, and all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by…”

And I remember a long ago and cold December evening, standing, ready for bed, barefoot, wearing one of my dad’s worn out white t-shirts as a makeshift nightgown, while a PBS personality of sorts — I’ve no idea who — began reading “Sea Fever” by John Masefield. The guy looked very appropriately poetic standing with the sea behind, while wearing a thick white turtleneck sweater.

I didn’t have a thick white turtleneck sweater but I knew the poem, knew the poem well enough that I didn’t need to read Masefield’s words the way the PBS guy was doing. I had memorized “Sea Fever” earlier that year — another Friday poetry morning in the books, like every Friday poetry morning during that school year. I watched older kids goof off and fail, others reduced to tears at the prospect of speaking in public, others simply falter through the process. I loved the poetry though, even while I felt bad for the other kids. The words were magic.

“And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking…”

But by the time I was 11, the world seemed out of sorts, even more so by age 12, then 13. Growing up is an unsettling experience and I felt off-kilter, uneven, unable to find my balance, never quite sure what was expected of me at any given moment. All the same, the poetry was still there, the magic of the words grounding me, warming me, reminding me of other — perhaps better — times and places. And of course, there were the stars.

In an earlier time in my life, I had grown up with a little movie trilogy called Star Wars and the space opera fairytale spoke to my very young soul in ways I could only begin to understand. My oldest sister told me the story of “The Empire Strikes Back” when I was only two and I was enraptured. After that came the action figures and the read-along-with-me-in-your books.

But by the time I was 11, Star Wars was — back then — a thing of the past. Merchandise had been pulled from the stores in 1984 and I was bereft of anything Star Wars for the rest of my childhood. Into this archetypal desert I went, forlorn and lost, having to imagine the rest of the trilogy’s stories on my own. But then on the cusp of adolescence, I began watching — at my older sister’s recommendation — “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” At first, the show was just a stand-in for Star Wars, but in time, the ships and characters and lore began to weave a strange magic of their own.

“And a grey mist on the sea’s face and a gray dawn breaking…”

I knew the sea’s face and the gray dawn from a road trip to New England. I had stood next to the ghostly bones of the last of the four-masted schooners, hulks black and dead on a rocky beach in Maine. And now, beneath the cold winter stars, I was finding another navy of sorts, grand ships of line with their own lore and strange-yet-rational fantasy.

The Next Generation’s “Enterprise,” the big Galaxy class, will always hold a special place in my topsy-turvy adolescent heart, but the ship of the classic Captain Kirk films — a “Constitution” class refit — forever holds my imagination: a big movie space age version of a sailing ship, all angular lines and white hull, white like the sails of the old ships of line. I could look up into the sky while out in the barnyard and imagine she was up there, all poetry in the cold dark of space, a small bit of poetry that made sense amid the maelstrom that was, often, my own emotions.

“I must go down to the seas again for the call of the running tide is a wild call and a clear call that cannot be denied…”

Somewhere in the back of my mind I still hear a lone and melodic French horn and in certain ways I know I’ll always be that gangly kid watching “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” on VHS for the first time, having gotten the tape for Christmas. I had so many questions back then, and no fewer now.

But this cold dark season is different for when I think back, I find I am becoming that for which I had so hoped. And I am again reminded of that never-ending hope that boys have when yearning hard to become, a hope that is always bigger than themselves, and forever out there amongst the ships and the stars.

“And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying, and the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea gulls crying.”