Ninth Wave Testimony (Version 2)

Intro

Salt in the seams where my father's coat still hangs

Radio static where the last mayday rang

Nine waves came before the harbor learned my name

Every one that passed me left a different kind of stain

Verse

Deck iced at midnight, boots gone stiff with frost

Skipper kept a ledger counting who we might've lost

Net line snapped and coiled like a serpent round my wrist

Rope burn taught me faster than the chart could through the mist

First wave hit like warning, second hit like debt

Third one took the dinghy that we never did forget

Fourth wave dragged the flare box off the starboard rail

Fifth one drowned the engine, left us breathing diesel and hail

Sixth wave stripped the paint off the name we'd wrote in white

Seventh cracked the mast in half, cold as broken light on ice

Eighth wave, I stopped counting, just held the line and prayed

Ninth wave came in silence, like the sea had already paid

Woke up on the rocks with salt inside my lungs like lead

Coast guard logged me lucky, logged three others dead

I carry all their numbers tattooed under my sleeve

Every scar's a signature the ocean makes you leave

Hook

Eight waves are liars, the ninth one tells the truth

It took my father's boat, it took my father's youth

I stood there when it broke and I'm still standing now

Ninth wave testimony — I'm the proof

Verse

Twenty years since the wreck, I run the dock at dawn

Teach the young ones how to read a swell before it's drawn

Told the new kid ninth wave ain't just a number, it's a claim

Every fisherman I lost still answers when I say his name

Insurance man came sniffing when the trawler went for scrap

Said the sea don't owe you nothing, I said neither does the map

Quota cuts and diesel prices choking out the fleet

Half