Lights flickered as evening woke
the tired lagoon
where wrinkled reflections
and silhouettes of a million
spruce steeples
tickled the horizon.
A chorus of slapping halyards
joined a colony of gulls
in their repertoire
above the docked fisherman.
Trees, painted half-white
by windward squalls
faded off like a black curtain
to await an encore at dawn...
Categories:
halyards, sunset,
Form: Free verse
They sit, seldom still, naked
yet not silent - beckoning,
like a wind chime concert
of tapping halyards,
wave slapped hulls and
groaning lines where freedom hints
to their captains, "To sea, to sea".
Categories:
halyards, boat,
Form: Free verse
Wind ripped through the rigging blowing cold
Sheets with extended billows were stiff,
Unyielding, almost beyond their fold
Men struggled to reef them and knew if
Gale and mounting surge continued bad
There wouldn’t be quarter and peace as gift
For end of this wind they’d be most glad
Sleet, ice in halyards encrusted blocks
To survive, their skill was all they had
Again to see Halifax’s far docks
Tea for Scotia was stored in ship’s hold
Hands scambled down to deck from the tops
Wind ripped through the rigging blowing cold
Unyielding, almost beyond their fold
Categories:
halyards, angst,
Form: Terza Rima
Listen when you awake at crack of dawn
hear the chorus of all the birds singing
watch them as they scurry and dig the lawn
until a nasty cat sends them fleeing
How very dull and bland without any birds
silence would greet us with it's bleakness
less colour everywhere, half mast halyards
how lucky to have birds to add brightness
So many feathered friends around
delighting us with their wonderful songs
the sound of harmony our souls surround
for the sweet mellifluous songs prolongs
Tunes everywhere blending in harmony
sweetly combining sounding like honey
Categories:
halyards, bird, music, nature, song,
Form: Sonnet
Those stars that sailors follow
Guiding less the sea to swallow
And the night seas black as tar
Beyond the wave a land afar
Halyards taught, blocks in tallow
Breezes fresh and salt swallow
Timbers creak, white horses foam
Callused hands and oceans comb
And the stars pull them forth
South, east, west and north
Cabin boy or salty jack
Afore the mast, bare their back
Seas of glass or howling gales
Stands his watch what ever ails
For them the ocean a magic place
For every dawn a changing face
The face of his one true love
The wind, stars, skies above
Categories:
halyards, seastars,
Form: Heroic Couplet