Shane Zhao Poet Free verse

Shoreline Shadows 10-01-2025

I arrived a stranger
to a set of little wooden cabins by the sea.
Pretty they were, with weathered straw roofs
and fences curved like hulls,
the sea whispering at my feet.
The skipper who brought me here was a jolly man,
eternally smiling his toothless grin,
his eyes gentle in the lantern light
as he coaxed the boat through the tight waterways
like a surgeon with a scalpel.

Dawn.
Perhaps the night had blinded me
for with the first blush of the sun,
I saw for the first time (properly),
the world in which they habited.
Tattered wooden walkways, supported by little more
than some planks, nets and rubber tyres
propped up a grid of ramshackle tents 
and oddly skewed cabins.
Nearby, motorboats, row upon row, bobbed upon the tide,
their engines rusted and sluggish,
unworthy of the sailors that piloted them.

I saw a woman, maybe 40,
wash her face sparingly with water
and subconsciously touched my still damp hair,
ashamed of the luxury of my long shower.
The cabin offered a variety of "fun" activities,
like fishing and ground traps
but watching the other holidayers pouring over the nets
I couldn't help but feel melancholy;
these things that we treated as games
were the fishermen's entire livelihoods.
When I departed, a young girl,
school bag fastened tightly to her chest,
clambered aboard our boat.
I thought of my waiting flight
and wondered if she could
rise above the waves.

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