#sailors - Hello Poetry

It has been said by rigging rope and restless hand no working men so thick with omens stand as those who wrest their living from the sea, where fate and foam compose great uncertainty. From shore she sings a soft, persuasive tone, a placid wash of blue green on tempered stone a poncif sky, a calm that seems complete, a gentle rhythm, almost made to cheat. But step beyond that edged-most obedient line, and all her colours break their grand design; the dominant lines bend, break, dissolve, renew, in violent contraposition of grey and blue. So full hearts them sailors learn by fear, refined to a art, known end was always close or near, to keep a careful harmony of thy heart: no whistled note to stir the wind’s they start, lest air and wave return in tempestuous refrain, to whistle might call storm and rain Even the tongue must yield, must shift its say, soften its edge so waters keep still at bay; for words themselves jar the invisible design and wake the deep by something which might bring decline. And spare the albatross, that pallid guide, a living balance drifting with the sea and tide; to strike it down is discord sharply cast, a fatal note no long prayer can last. Yet cormorants, in darker measure drawn, move like lost souls between the dusk and dawn a quiet counter-theme, oh a shadowed grace, the dead made gentle, tread in their borrowed space. Each vessel launched is wedded to the deep, once sealed in blood, now ritual wine in sleep; a bride adorned to meet a vaster will, her hull in tense accord with waters still. Thus named “she,” not in softness but in sign, a form that enters nature’s grand design where every plank and sail must one day be returned in full to that vast symmetry. And on their skin the sailors tattoo their belief in charms, inked arm harmonies to guard their fragile forms; small bursts of colour held against the whole, an antiphony inscribed upon the soul. No flowers bloom aboard only their trace, in flags that flicker through the salted space; a memory of land, of safer schemes, set trembling in these wind brave fading dreams. For she the ocean is no tyrant, nor a foe, but perfect in the laws it will not show; a boundless score where all must play their part and end as echoes in its sounding heart.

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Apr 9

Apr 9, 2026 at 9:20 AM UTC

MalcolmG

Antiphony of Grey and Blue

It has been said by rigging rope and restless hand no working men so thick with omens stand as those who wrest their living from the sea, where fate and foam compose great uncertainty. From shore she sings a soft, persuasive tone, a placid wash of blue green on tempered stone a poncif sky, a calm that seems complete, a gentle rhythm, almost made to cheat. But step beyond that edged-most obedient line, and all her colours break their grand design; the dominant lines bend, break, dissolve, renew, in violent contraposition of grey and blue. So full hearts them sailors learn by fear, refined to a art, known end was always close or near, to keep a careful harmony of thy heart: no whistled note to stir the wind’s they start, lest air and wave return in tempestuous refrain, to whistle might call storm and rain Even the tongue must yield, must shift its say, soften its edge so waters keep still at bay; for words themselves jar the invisible design and wake the deep by something which might bring decline. And spare the albatross, that pallid guide, a living balance drifting with the sea and tide; to strike it down is discord sharply cast, a fatal note no long prayer can last. Yet cormorants, in darker measure drawn, move like lost souls between the dusk and dawn a quiet counter-theme, oh a shadowed grace, the dead made gentle, tread in their borrowed space. Each vessel launched is wedded to the deep, once sealed in blood, now ritual wine in sleep; a bride adorned to meet a vaster will, her hull in tense accord with waters still. Thus named “she,” not in softness but in sign, a form that enters nature’s grand design where every plank and sail must one day be returned in full to that vast symmetry. And on their skin the sailors tattoo their belief in charms, inked arm harmonies to guard their fragile forms; small bursts of colour held against the whole, an antiphony inscribed upon the soul. No flowers bloom aboard only their trace, in flags that flicker through the salted space; a memory of land, of safer schemes, set trembling in these wind brave fading dreams. For she the ocean is no tyrant, nor a foe, but perfect in the laws it will not show; a boundless score where all must play their part and end as echoes in its sounding heart.