Best Freighters Poems
Morning fog was parting for the day's performance,
and an audience of just me sat cross legged,
waiting for ghosts.
They appeared slowly, one by one.
Old whalers, freighters and, fifty yards out,
slate grey bones scarred with burnt sienna,
a young trawler.
A Cormorant dried its wings on the wheelhouse,
primary feathers spread, glistening ebony,
tattered like a tramp's raincoat.
The surf whispered warnings.
February 4th 2016
For contest 'The Sea shore' sponsor- Craig Cornish
I stand atop a mountain tall,
look down upon the land,
the forests clinging to the slopes,
green valleys long and grand.
Rivers carve torrents right through them,
can still hear them up here,
cabins scattered amongst the woods,
one such belongs to me.
Some wonder why I walk up peaks,
why I deal with that strain,
the only view that is better
would be from an airplane.
I am jammed in a window seat,
thirty thousand feet high,
the Great Lakes stretching below me,
almost as blue as sky.
There’s boats I see amongst the wave,
but they're actually ships,
trawlers and freighters loaded down,
doggedly make their trip.
The gray of cities on the shore,
suburbs encircle it,
the only view that could beat this
would be up in orbit.
I look out the capsule window,
five hundred miles high,
amazed by fringe of black and blue
where the great void meets sky.
The clouds a frosting, wispy white,
obscuring land and earth,
on the night side a web of lights,
the cities' yellow blur.
Beyond me a spangled starfield
stretches on endlessly,
to see greater you would have to
leave the dang galaxy.
I stare down on the spiral arms
of the grand Milky Way,
Bound loose around a brilliant core
where countless bright stars blaze.
Reaches of stars drifting about
in graceful, curving arcs,
billions of stars and their planets,
defy the endless dark.
The nova and the nebula,
so beautiful it hurts,
to see better you would have to
know the whole universe.
I gaze down on the great clusters,
light dots looks like a star,
but each is a whole galaxy,
Lord, how many there are!
Swinging around in massive groups,
too big to comprehend,
I can’t try to make sense of this,
it’s just too big for men.
My mind says that there’s nothing more,
I’ve reached the end, must quit;
but part of me thinks something else
must be bigger than this.
…and won’t that be cool to see.
Old ships come to die
on a silent beach;
once they ferried freight.
Side by side, they lie
broken hulls; now each
bide their rusty fate.
Image #1
Water
rough, calm
swimming, sailing, surfing
freighters, buoys, fields, earth
tilling, planting, harvesting
fertile, barren
land
11.10.2014
Sponsor Regina Riddle
Diamante Poem
2nd
Coast to Coast
The sun ascends over the Great Lakes
Settles back into the indigo depths
Flight of a copper swan shore to shore
With her sweeping wing tips skimming
Commanding
The azure locks of eternity to open
Gather her iron-ore souls from the cliffs
That lift along the turquoise bays
Arise
Our northern Holy Ghost.
These drinkable oceans are graves to glaciers
Tombs for freighters
Limestone crypts
Where condemned sailors still dance and drink
A thousand clicks amidst the ancient glow
Below
Moon boulders like mobiles of suspended fish.
It’s as if Michigan’s peninsulas
Was its own sliding green continents
Fitting together pieces of a new planet
Waves bellow a dare to all the apocalyptic surfers
Come sail these giant breaking swells.
Though you’re a dipped hand
Waving to outer space
It’s your down-to-Earth bare cold caress
That we count on for dousing the summer steam
From our steely brow.
Michiganians
Plant your bare feet into the hot tops
Of the Sand Dunes of Sleeping Bear
Prepare an avalanche slide
From the side of your hand
A child pushing away the world’s troubles
Throw out your hard chest
Reveal your beautiful breasts
Like the goddesses and gods that you are.
Gaze out from these colossal pink shores
To the horizon that bends like a violin
Under the chin of a setting sun.
Michiganians
You are the everlasting Keepers
Of the Mighty Mighty Great Lakes.
The Flag of the British Merchant Navy
The Battle of the Atlantic
We’ve heard of the famous Mighty Hood that was sunk by a Bismarck shell
We know how many men were lost and the Skippers name as well
We’ve seen the Battleship Barham rolling on her side
before the huge explosion in which so many died
The Repulse and Prince of Wales on rout to the Singapore post
Both lost to the Jap torpedo planes off the Malaya coast
There’s a film about the Kelly sunk in the battle of Crete
And of the famous River Plate where we inflicted defeat
Yet who knows the names of the merchant ships sunk almost every day
Who knew that as these ships went down seamen were put off pay
Shipping Companies all did this to cut down on the cost
They lost one of their freighters, but how many lives were lost
What of the men on the Arctic run ferrying Russian supplies
The ocean full of U-boats and Bombers filling the skies
Sailing a gas filled Tanker some only in their teens
Wondering if they’ll freeze to death or be blown to smithereens
Wallowing along in a rusting tramp to save the Russian Nation
Struggling to make eight knots whilst trying to keep station
Should a seaman stay topside or should he seek his bunk
Knowing if you fall astern your certain to be sunk
Many a merchant ship now lies under the Barents Sea
Lost in a desperate struggle to set the Russians free
The ocean bed is littered with merchant seaman’s bones
Now to lay forever at peace with Davie Jones
As a Nation we are rightly proud of our Navy in World War Two
Likewise of the R.A.F and what we owe to the few
To the men who fought at Arhnem and Monty’s Desert Rats
To those who fought the Japanese to all we raise our hats
From the Home Guard to the S.O.E in it from the start
All of our Armed Services were keen to play their part
Each had lost so many when they counted the final muster
But the greatest loss was those who sailed under the Old Red Duster
On the shore he sits….
With his wits…he feels the grits…
Through his feet…and in his teeths…?
Having the determination…with some affection…
Cherishing the urge…with the intention to splurge…
And the sea waits …preparing for his dates…
What will his future hold…?
Will there be stories untold…as his destiny unfold…?
The testimony of a man…who, for so long…
Has travelled…the globe…
The fishes …the boats…the sinks…the floats…
The ships …the sailors…the bunkers…the freighters…
The oils in craters…the servings of waiters…
From the bows…to the sterns…he learns…
It’s difficult…no doubt…
The experience…like mountains…
The incidents…no fountains…
No parents could teach…the limits of his reach…
A young man…his dreams…his lifelong…it seems…
To be daring…no fearing…his only caring…
On the sea…to be…where he’ll always be free…
Through strong winds…and pouring rains..,
The glaring of sunshine…the severity of pains…
The channels…the straits…
The landscapes…the oceans…
The bearings…the emotions…
Where the South…no doubt…
Is a path…to the north…?
The successes…the disasters…the writhing of waters…
Some men…gods help them…
They stare…no fear…
Yet disappear…like thin air…
His wisdom…it’s like a kingdom…
No scare…to share…
No Ivy League…or premier league…
No university…what an audacity…
No Buckingham…no Yale…
Could pass…or fail…
The vision…to sail…
Of a seaman…his tale…
We love our silly Grazillas,
Who eat chocolate ice cream because they don't like vanilla.
They prefer lumpy pillas,
As they nap under the willas.
They eat salt by the pillas,
And watch only chinchillas.
They prefer to work as millas,
They prefer their envelopes to be manilla.
They could easily take down Godzilla,
Because them Grazillas,
Are stone cold killas.
They are a cross between a gorilla and a gator,
And they sure do enjoy their maters and taters.
They make fun of waiters,
And they are great imitaters.
They love gossiping with the gators,
And are known to be fair ice skaters.
Peculiar too is the way they only eat fish flavored Now and Laters,
And man can they drive those freighters,
And they choose to shave with cheese graters.
They are even one-third dinosaur,
And they are rotten to the core.
They love to renact the Civil War,
And to get a dollar they will pretend to be poor.
They play golf just so they can yell Fore,
And when they get a banana they all yell Score!
They are in a band and go on world tour,
But I admit they are sometimes a bore.
They are the legends of lore,
That come from the Loth Lorien shore,
And in their land they are unequivical lords.
How do they have shimmering tails,
They put water from the Amazon on every golden scale.
Their fur is silvery and pale,
And they comb it twice a day without fail.
Their favorite snack is kale,
Especially in the middle of a gale.
They love riding the rails,
Looking for the the Holy Grail.
They may look frail,
But you never can tell.
They like digging wells,And telling tall tales.
Try never to compliment the males,
Cause their egos sure do swell.So if you come across a silly Grazilla,
Lazing under a willa...
Don't forget to bow to the queen of the Grazillas.
Whose name is Drucilla,
Who lounges on golden pillas...
While she listens to thrilla...
So I bid you ado untilla...
I've been up a bit and down
a bit and hung around
in river towns, when glory days
and gamblin' boats were beauty to behold;
long and sleek with shapely curves
and ripe just like a lady
in the bloomin' blush of prime.
Standin' high n' mighty.......she
was glidin' through the water,
lookin' every bit a woman,
feelin' fancy-free and proud.
A sacred shroud a-movin'
on the Mississippi highway,
shinning like a diamond,
in the moonlight headin' south.
Been livin' on the river most
my life. I've seen bout' everything
the river lets you see.
Winona, Minnesota, south
to Memphis, Tennessee.
Down to Shrievport, Lousianna, where
shrimpers float their bayou boats
and freighters sail the sea.
Nawlin's cajun cookin
be my comfort company,
along with Creole women
givin' spice of life to me.
The dancin' bands play Zydeco
and sing about the legendary
swamp-witch history.
The river women love me
and I tell you this I know
'cause up and down the river, river
women tell me so.
Spent my gambin' days in Natchez,
Mississippi, don't ya see,
where fine up-standin' ladies
mixed with riff-raff just like me.
Had a time or two of trouble, but
young men with a temper
can test trouble easily.
I spent some time from livin'
doin' labor for the man,
but when my time was over
and the man had cut me loose,
I left my youth behind me
and my river life began.
Born in Chauvin, Lousianna,
back in nineteen forty-three,
a bayou boy who found his joy,
dreamin' dreams of river queens,
and hopin' glory days were on their way
so he could walk the river block
and smell the rare and richer air
of up-north Baton Rouge.
Then gaze and praise her majesty;
the lady, Mississippi, flowin' south into the sea.
With cajun music ragin'
in my bones of 16 years;
and fantasies of youthful truth
now burnin' in my soul,
I left my home in Chauvin,
on my way to Baton Rouge,
to search the Mississippi for my dreams of Zydeco.
Ben Sana Mecburum: “You are indispensable”
by Attila Ilhan
translation by Nurgul Yayman and Michael R. Burch
You are indispensable; how can you not know
that you’re like nails riveting my brain?
I see your eyes as ever-expanding dimensions.
You are indispensable; how can you not know
that I burn within, at the thought of you?
Trees prepare themselves for autumn;
can this city be our lost Istanbul?
Now clouds disintegrate in the darkness
as the street lights flicker
and the streets reek with rain.
You are indispensable, and yet you are absent ...
Love sometimes seems akin to terror:
a man tires suddenly at nightfall,
of living enslaved to the razor at his neck.
Sometimes he wrings his hands,
expunging other lives from his existence.
Sometimes whichever door he knocks
echoes back only heartache.
A screechy phonograph is playing in Fatih ...
a song about some Friday long ago.
I stop to listen from a vacant corner,
longing to bring you an untouched sky,
but time disintegrates in my hands.
Whatever I do, wherever I go,
you are indispensable, and yet you are absent ...
Are you the blue child of June?
Ah, no one knows you—no one knows!
Your deserted eyes are like distant freighters ...
perhaps you are boarding in Yesilköy?
Are you drenched there, shivering with the rain
that leaves you blind, beset, broken,
with wind-disheveled hair?
Whenever I think of life
seated at the wolves’ table,
shameless, yet without soiling our hands ...
Yes, whenever I think of life,
I begin with your name, defying the silence,
and your secret tides surge within me
making this voyage inevitable.
You are indispensable; how can you not know?
Attila Ilhan (1925-2005) was a Turkish poet, translator, novelist, screenwriter, editor, journalist, essayist and reviewer. Keywords/Tags: Turkey, Turkish, Translation, City, International, Leaving, Depression, Absent, Absence, Parting, Separation, Distance, Loss, Break Up, Soulmate, Soulmates, Love, Lovers, Companionship, Passion, Desire, Longing
Lakes Michigan and Huron are basically a single lake,
Sometimes called Lake Michigan-Huron, combined doth make
Total area of 45,300 square miles (117,000 km2)
Have the same surface elevation of 577 feet (176 m),
Connected by 295-foot deep
dire Straits of Mackinac Islands splayed like a rake.
Approximately 35,000 islands extant
throughout oceanic like sea
largest among them is Manitoulin Island
in Lake Huron perhaps,
The largest island in any inland body
of water in the world.
The second-largest island is Isle Royale in Lake Superior.
Both of these islands are large enough to contain
multiple lakes themselves — Manitoulin Island's
Lake Manitou is listed in the Guinness Book
of World Records as the world's largest lake
located on a freshwater island.
Connection to the ocean:
The Saint Lawrence Seaway and Great Lakes Waterway
connect the Great Lakes to ocean-going vessels.
The move to wider ocean-going container ships —
which do not fit through the locks on these routes —
has limited container shipping on the lakes.
Most Great Lakes trade is of bulk material
and bulk freighters of Seawaymax-size or less
can move throughout the entire lakes and out
to the Atlantic. The Great Lakes are also connected
to the Gulf of Mexico by way of the Illinois River
(from the Chicago River) and the Mississippi River.
This poem was inspired by the interviews by Earl K. Pollon and S. S. Matheson conducted with native Sekanni peoples who were negatively effected by the flooding of their communal homelands by the building of the W.A.C. Bennett Dam. “This Was Our Valley” tells that story of injustice. 640 square miles of riverfront and hunting territory would be flooded to form Williston Lake. The Sekanni peoples were driven from their ancestral homeland in northeastern British Columbia, Canada and dispersed.
The Shopping Cart Injustice
People, place and spirit
All were our relations
Biopeds, quadrupeds, winged or finned -
River language told us so.
Fishing rocks spoke the run
Where the riffles and the rapids talked.
Ancestors, dead and alive, told living stories where
Running the river banks, the children played.
The land was a book written in forms.
We made our mark with love, community
Fishing weirs, aspen dugout canoes,
Hunting trails, camps and sacred sites.
Always traders, we traded furs with
White settlers when they arrived
On the rivers Parsnip, Finlay and Peace at
Finlay Forks, Fort Grahame, Fort McLeod.
We added pack trains, teams of pack horses
River freighters, flat bottom ‘longboats’
For supplies and for mail delivery.
It seemed that we could live together.
Then one day a government agent said
That shopping carts were coming
They would flood our world
Water rising everywhere
Shopping carts with electric can openers
Full, fast to check out,
Shopping carts with electric hair blowers,
Full, faster to check out,
Shopping carts with electric air conditioners,
Full, fastest to check out
Shopping carts with electric stoves.
Check out, check out, check out.
They would make our rivers into a lake
We would move or drown.
Our elders did not believe it.
That was the only consultations!
Soon Saskatoon berries all under water
Next, the banks sloughed back to graveyards
Next, cliffs crumbled, and banks fell into rising lake
Houses of the villages slipped and floated
Coffins, bones and bodies strewed the shore
Where tangled trees, debris and more
Eddied with flotsam in the wind.
We wept for our ancestors!
We weep for our children.
We had to flee the destruction
Caused by tree grinders, D-9 bull dozers
The dam construction.
Now they want to take more
Another dam for more shopping carts.
Please stop Site ‘C’.
Circling above the shore, watching the gulls
Squawking loudly above the ocean’s roar,
Hungry for every morsel, never any lulls
Watching the gulls circling above the shore.
Freighters on the horizon slowly moving
On the ocean’s surface laden with provision,
The supply chain, I see, is finally improving
Slowly moving freighters on the horizon.
The urban skyline rising starkly to my right,
A scene leaving so much to my surmising,
Of city folks waking up in the morning light
Starkly to my right, the urban skyline rising.
On my early morning walk along the shore
In habitual silence, I stand there and gawk
Wondering what this new day has in store
Along the shore on my early morning walk.
Written September 5, 2022
i shake my head no when the target employee asks
if i want to sign up for a rewards card
i shake my head a lot
i have a nervous twitch that jerks my head around
to listen for signs of oncoming freighters
my father and mother call me overmedicated
i call myself in the middle of the night when i am awake
with claws poised above my wrists
antidepressants are a funny thing
when your depression isnt a depression anymore,
when it isnt feeling sad or guilty or lonely
it isn't feeling at all,
it isn't even being numb
it is falling away from your body altogether.
it is you, adrift on autopilot
you've lost your edge, old dog, i tell my naked body in the mirror on the night of my fifteenth birthday.
i spent today underwater
i dropped my plate because i could
and i couldn't keep my arms up
and i stood amongst the shattered ceramic for far longer than i should have,
staring into space like a piece in moma
my father and mother walk in
and call me catatonic
i don't respond
they walk back out and i am still standing in the ceramic
i never move for the fear of sharp things
and for the fear that my lips work fine
and my standing here,
barely breathing,
isn't the medication at all.
ENTERING THE HOOK
Along the channel edge
Buoy lights swayed and tossed.
At our hull the surly sea threw a last slap
Like an animal wild and lost.
Stinging spray stopped driving
Into our faces as we crossed
The Hook bar into the river - held
‘Tween the grey breakwaters of the Rhine,
Held calm as the current allowed -
And we slowed our creaking struggle in the brine,
Finding our best course in the stream,
Past barges and freighters in line.
Mile upon mile of oil tanks
Steelworks, mills, cables lined our route
And electric power stations spread
Their nets out to tame the briny brute.
Then small ropes thrown to guide
The big hawsers, and the hoot
Of tugs shoving and pulling us alongside
The grey concrete wharf; ropes now tight;
Sky red with lights; army of men shouting
In the midnight's hour left and right;
Cranes on trains took the strain
As she settled, held for the night,
Secure in her moorings safe
In the liplapping black Rhine.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
NOTE
One sea trip I took was at night between UK and Hook of Holland (Hoek van Holland).
A strong wind and storm developed in the dark and we were glad to reach the
entrance to the Rhine at Hook. Despite the grey industrial nature of the huge
port, it seemed like heaven after the storm in the sea.