Canal Boat

Once every month the black boat comes,
When mist unthreads the sleeping quay,
No footsteps sound, no lantern burns,
No living soul its course can see.

It creaks against the lonely dock,
Old timber groaning soft with age,
And waits exactly seven minutes,
Silent as grief, still as a page.

No ferryman stands at the helm,
No hand is seen to steer or guide,
Yet something stirs upon the boards,
What unseen phantoms step inside?

A ferry for forgotten dead?
For names the river could not keep?
Who is the captain none behold,
Who sails between our waking sleep?

And when it slips back into mist,
No witness marks the path it chose,
If none have seen it truly come,
Did it exist, or a dream of ghosts?