I've been looking for new songs to learn in the 1985 Bok-Muir-Trickett Fashioned in the Clay album. I don't think this one is my style, but I like it. It's a perfect song for Gordon Bok to sing, and he does a good job of it on the album.

JOHN
(Larry Kaplan, Winter Harbor Music, 1976)

Foggy harbor,
Cold and wet and not a soul,
The boats are lying crooked in the mud.
All about the sounds of life are chilled and distant;
The kerosene lamps flicker in the night.

Rub your hands together, pull your collar up,
We'll drink another round before the night is done.
Then it's to your chances, boys,
Soon we'll all be leaving,
And not a word about the times to come.

John comes home to his old boat, all alone.
(He's got his stocking-cap pulled down around his ears.)
Ten years going and he's worked his hands to stone and leather,
Tonight he says he's got to get away.
Busted broke, no place to go, that's what he says you get
For putting all your time into the sea,
Then a man gets old, he says,
Too late to settle down, he says,
Too late to find a place for company.
Rub your hands together...

Hear the hulls a-creaking hard against the rocky bottom,
Hear the hungry, lonesome singing gulls.
Curse those winter winds,
The empty dreams that took you in:
When you're young enough, you never get your fill.
Turn your lanterns up, and throw the big hatch open wide:
No man is a stranger in the cold.
Throw another log into the stove; the night is young enough,
And good friends keep a man from getting old.

Rub your hands together, pull your collar up,
We'll drink another round before the night is done.
Then it's to your chances, boys,
Soon we'll all be leaving,
And not a word about the times to come.

notes from Gordon Bok: Larry is now a children's doctor in Boston. He worked on some of the same vessels I did, and wrote many fine songs about them.
This is about a friend of ours who devoted his life to a schooner he loved (not his own). He stayed with her summer and winter over the years, while we part—time sailors went our various ways when the year got dark. (But having wintered in this harbor myself, I can vouch for every word of this song.)
The idea for the song came one late autumn, when Larry had made the agonizing decision to leave the boats forever and go on with medicine, and he saw John down on the docks in the fading light, staring around at the boats with their covers on, making the old decision all over again. (GB)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDYTFSjNzl0&list=OLAK5uy_kS1oqMHSTVHtFYD4UaM1G4FU0hWeTh2yo&index=2