Breafast: I stretch my gifts out, make them last. Incredible pork sausage from a place out beyond north of Tallahassee. Perfect coffee, hot and black, fresh, translucent and clean, the last and final bag from a coffee club. If so moved, I also have chocolate from under the Christmas tree, though I like to have it to sharpen my awareness on Sunday mornings.

The sausage leaves just the right peppery around the edge of my tongue, and the coffee sets it off, which reminds me that the chief cooks in my Navy ships always tossed a pinch of black pepper into those huge coffee urns down on the mess deck. So, not really John Masefield, having breakfast out here on 7H porch as the water traffic passes by is close enough.

An old reliable is gone: looking east from 7H, clouds of steam boiling from the paper mill stacks will never be again. The mill has been shut down. Never again, "Guess it's gonna rain: I can smell the paper mill".

Or from my childhood, some few will remember. In every family that the man worked at the paper mill there were two cars: the car, and the mill car, an old car eaten up with acid and other chemicals from being parked at the mill every day for years. In my day, usually something from the nineteen-thirties. Seems to me those mill cars got passed along and/or sold to another mill family as the men retired.

Pic: yes, the atmosphere is hazy this morning, clear white sky, and the paper mill is still standing on the horizon, a reminder and a memory. No more setting the Timex by the seven o'clock whistle though.

RSF&PTL

Sea-Fever

BY JOHN MASEFIELD

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 the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,

And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide

Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;

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.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,

To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;

And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,

And a quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.