Timbuktu

I guess this would be easier for you if you know a bit about sailing and about sailing history - but I will tell the story anyway:  When I was a small child my mother would recite a poem to me.  Scraps of it would sometimes start to go around in my head even though decades had passed since then.  I couldn't remember much of it other than that the poem involved a ship and the word:  Timbuktu.  I had long suspected that  Rudyard Kipling  was the author.

My mother was very ill the last time that childhood memory came back to my middle-of-the-night reveries.  And at 90+ she was not likely to go on much longer.  So when those poem scraps re-appeared in my head  (waking me in the middle of the night)  I got up and did a bit of research, but found nothing that I have in my library, and nothing that I could find on the internet, which resembled the poem of my fond and pleasant childhood memories.  Although;  I did find a number of references to an off-color limrick with a reference to both a ship and the word:  Timbuktu.

So sometime after dawn that morning I called my mother and asked her about it:  Did she remember it?  Could she recite it still?  Etc.

She paused for a long while, and then said:  "Well;  it is a Dirty poem."

I told her that I was well familiar with the off-color limrick and that's not what I meant - I wanted to know the words to the Rudyard Kipling poem that she had so often recited to me as a small boy.

She paused long again, and then said:  "But what I recited to you all those years ago Was the dirty poem.  I just left out the dirty parts.  Who is Rudyard Kipling?  Do I know him?"

So;  with an entire idyllic childhood  'memory'  suddenly shattered;  that of my mother reciting classical poetry to me, I was depressed and gravely disappointed.  And angry too.  Because, as with so very many things  (like old girlfriends and so forth)  I would much prefer my time-filtered memories to the too often unpleasant reality.

No!  I don't want to see what matronly, haggard old women they have since become.  I don't want to see how different they are from those young sweet tender little cuties which still ramble pleasantly though my mind's eye.  No;  I don't want to know it!  Jeeeeeez;  I don't even want to Suspect it! <g>

Please!  Leave me at Least with my memories!

But anyway;  I then sat down and wrote a poem for myself.  So that whenever that particular poetry reciting memory comes back to me, the "poem" involved will not be some old sailor's leering joke.

This is it:

From out across the ocean's tide
An ancient ship came into view
Asked where bound? She replied;
Destination: Timbuktu

On she sailed, then lost to view
Hull down and homeward bound
Sleeping sailors with eyes askew
Dreamed of destination: Timbuktu

The Captain often thinks of home
While distant seas they roam
Letters he closed with love and glue
For his sweetie back in Timbuktu

Pulling ropes;  they tend the sails
And hurry her over the blue
Scraps tossed over from a pail
Even Cook prepares for Timbuktu

Beset by storms and driven back
Yet through the waves they screw
Sewing sails and patching cracks
Their struggle valiant for Timbuktu

Though the masts went south and over
And old horse long they had to chew
They'd rather swim than miss
Their destination: Timbuktu

I don't know if it was worth sitting though that convoluted and whiney story of mine to get to - but I suppose I'll leave that to you to decide.