M. Kei
M. Kei is a tall ship sailor and award-winning poet. He lives on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay and apprenticed aboard a skipjack, a sail-powered oyster dredge. He now serves with a fully rigged ship. His publications include over 1200 tanka poems in six languages and ten countries. He is the editor-in-chief of the anthology series, Take Five : Best Contemporary Tanka, and the author of Slow Motion : The Log of a Chesapeake Bay Skipjack, a log he kept in verse form of several extended trips aboard a skipjack. He has edited and authored several other books of poetry and a major journal, Atlas Poetica : A Journal of Poetry of Place in Contemporary Tanka. He is also the author of the award-winning Pirates of the Narrow Seas series of gay naval adventure novels.
“Closer and closer they came. The sight was a glorious one: two vessels racing towards each other as the sun lifted above the rim of the world.”
“Only the Arrow ran with the Ajax.”
“Things that come with the fog: horseshoe crabs, tall ships, and wandering hearts.”
“She talks as she sails, the old wooden boat -- of oyster days, and summer bays, and watermen grown old.”
“The Spanish fleet was beautiful and terrifying. The great battleships were clouds of sail scudding before the wind while their xebecs and frigates ran with them like greyhounds coursing alongside huntsmen.”
“Even captains were pawns to the lords of the sea, who moved them – and sacrificed them – wither they would.”
“Whoever had designed her loved ships and knew the sea: he had designed her with his heart.”