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Crossing the Water

 Boyhood of raleigh
The Boyhood of Raleigh by Sir John Everett Millais

That painting: the brothers spell-bound,
stock-still, as the barefoot sailor points        
to the horizon. A toy ship
beached on pebbles
                                  piled like doubloons.
It’s doubtless the story

of setting out, long years ago,
with some bold captain, to explore
the unmapped world, the impossibly –
enticingly – remote

countries which in memory
have changed their meaning and become
his childhood when, like them, he heard
the truth in an old seadog’s lies.

Tom Vaughan

If you have any thoughts on this poem,  Tom Vaughan 
would be pleased to hear them.


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