Hilton Head Island: enisle; some work; a death bed poem and a poem about a death bed

 One of the many virtues of reading in the Kindle app is that when you come across an unknown word you can touch or click on it and usually get a definition.  A few days ago I came across enisle which was new to me and found it means ‘isolate on or as if on an island’.  The example of use given is:  in the sea of life enisled, we mortal millions live alone, a thought I have expressed elsewhere in this journal.  I am enisled.  I am charmed by the word.  It would make a good name for a boat or a book.

Here part of the poem, which is long and titled To Una who was his wife.

The marsh weather has been lovely and I have done some work on GANNET each of the past few days.  The Pelagic is completely removed.  Holes filled, sanded and painted.  The new stern light installed using some of the wiring I had run for the Pelagic.  Life lines tightened.  The mainsail raised to see if it would lower easily with the new thicker halyard.  It does.  Various bits and pieces used or leftover from the projects properly stowed.  I still have to inventory food and have the bottom cleaned, but I will be ready to sail for Culebra sometime in January.  I am very much looking forward to that.

The death bed poem was written by Kaga no Chiyo, a woman who lived 1705-1773.  Death bed poems are a Japanese tradition.

The poem about a death bed was written by Robinson Jeffers 1887-1962.

I just remembered that I may have written my own death bed poem a half century ago at sea on EGREGIOUS.  I had not thought of it for years, but was able to find it in STORM PASSAGE.  It includes double meanings of ‘senseless’.

                wind and waves of torment cease 

                to become a poem of this senseless voyage