Open Prayer

Complied by Jesse Halsey | Abingdon-Cokesbury Press |1951
In Memoriam
Frederick Isham Halsey
1912-1939

The sea tugged at his heart with all its tides,

            Its colors and rhythms and tumults; and tall ships

Passing at dawn or pausing at twilight were always

            In his eyes and his talk and at his finger tips.

Beautiful, big-eyed, with rebellious hair

            I watch him in a stiff wind with his boat,

Letting her have it; and I watch him roping her

            Down at the dock and the spray all over his coat.

And we watch him again at the wharf

            With the rising wind and the water suckling him out to sea;

And he gets in his boat and heads into the dawn-drift.

            To chat with a certain Captain from Galilee.

-from a poem by Joseph Auslander