Yellow rubber, swallowed by the wardrobe’s floor,
cracked wide across the instep where the plastic split.
They smell of wet rubber, mildew,
fear;
a pair of small boots, size twelve, seven years old,
caked in dried river-silt and salt.
A stranger may look in and call this precious,
a quiet snapshot of a girl who loved the rain
before her legs lengthened
and learned the art of running away.
How sweet to think I open up this closet to
reminisce an untouched girl leaping in the rain.
I never grew out of my yellow boots.
Perhaps I was torn out of them.
The monster does not have a face,
all rot and cold,
a mouth of shadows opening beneath the porch,
his heavy fingers smelling of damp earth and rust.
He never touched the boots; only the girl inside,
snapping her out of them like a bone from a joint,
leaving two empty hulls dropped flat upon the tile.
Each morning I reach into the dark for my coat,
and realize the closet is not where I hide the memory -
but where the monster wears my yellow rain boots,
waiting for me to slip my feet back in.
We drift along the town-side promenade
on damp paving stones,
at blue hour,
past caffé windows
and the resting Héracléa port
Earlier we were sun-struck
watching gulls flicking over the marina
worn thin by the heat and glare
now we’re moonstruck
the harbor bobbing with a thousand white hulls
tide-light, the skin of the night
silvers the masts at sway
and polishes the darkened curve of the sea
the sea is never still, as if breathing
further out at bay, yachts cork and glitter like crystal
a warm breeze loosens cares
drifting honeyed with jasmine and salt
gentle waves wander in then out
returning as if by instinct
and splashing on the breakers like applause.
little bells in boat riggings chime
everyone's strolling tonight
being not just stimulated,
but biohacked - seduced by the scene
now and then a scooter mumbles past
its lights gleaming in puddles
as if for measured emphasis
.
.
A song for this:
Inesaurible Tu by St. Project
The storm had collected all the boats,
And cast them broken on the shore,
Split timber, nothing floats,
Hulls torn wide to the core.
So calm now, the land had fallen to grieve,
No footsteps from the destruction,
Nothing left, heavy hush, no one to retrieve,
Waves move in and begin reconstruction.
Each tide takes a little more ground,
Another piece the sea rearranged,
Shoreline shifts without a sound,
Everything has changed.
Soon all will wash away,
Sand will act as emery,
Nothing left to decay,
No trace, no memory
In the yard behind the house
There were children's toys
Some broken, some just discarded by time.
All forgotten.
In the garden
They had planted together
The previous spring
There were tomatoes still,
Hanging tenuously on the vine,
Their skins fragile and transparent
From the frost, the freeze and the thaw.
On the ground
The squash and the pumpkins
Lay where they had grown
Green and orange and gold
Unharvested, black and brown
Their hulls in pieces
And their seeds scattered round
Rippling waves, frayed ropes,
familiar flags sail afar,
foreign hulls bring friendship.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Persian Gulf, 3 A.M.
Black water cradles burning ships,
their hulls like supplicant hands raised~
oil laps the shore in crimson strips.
Tehran at Dawn
The muezzin's cry splits dawn in two~
one half prayer, half shrapnel's hymn.
The saffron fields drink rocket dew.
After the Ayatollah
The regime plants mines where his voice once grew,
harvesting fear from the dunes and sand.
The wind still chants his verses blue.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Folded edges gleam~
paper boats on rain-swollen stream,
racing past.
Like childhood's brief,
bright voyage,
soggy hulls dissolve too fast.
a related memoir vignette can be read at poetrysoup.com/short_stories/paper_boats_floating_by_13644
Will sailors be scuttling ships.'
If the US navy; gets in a real fix?
In the great gulf of a war
with rockets in short store
Hulls in shallows, like half showing bricks'
Households unhitch, clapperboard hulls creaking -
the sound of storm-lashed rigging, as washing lines
and telephone wires twist
netting loosening foundations.
Where we once believed roots gripped bedrock,
planks bob in the swell, chests and their drawers
billow and fill.
Bed-springs gape, cupboards
turn inside out, what surfaces
is the face-up exposure
of our everyday innards.
Even as mailboxes are torn away,
we refuse to believe that a river and some wind
could move our lives so a far afield,
or that this world was really in fact,
just this shipwreck on a shore
that is always moving.
What we once thought of
as an address,
has turned out to be only a buoy
on an ever-moving wave.
River boats
drop down into sunken fog,
return
as buoyant as swimming seagulls.
A deep diving sky
spindrifts the hulls,
decks now ship airy waves
from far away seas.
The craft ride high and low
on this muted swell,
a cresting last beheld
in a shipwrecked China teacup.
The football is good, sir keir is in.' The sun is out
Maybe some cheer is needed? So that tells
Me the clouds might stay unseeded? Soon the euro
Luvvies will be waxing, their hulls to sail the sea and
Show us the gulls'
There'll be promise and rhetoric and commonality.' Sounds
Rather like 'common-wealth?' Yet in market parlance.' Thats
( The hook ) you're not to see.! Around.) It'll be all about care
Of many people see!! While wars are raging and plauges
Are sleeping..' Kept in test tubes awaiting injection.? Creeping.!.On
In some form? Once they get direction 'they'll be good'
For your gout..And aching back improve libido.?
Oh such invention.' Are
You all still upon track.? You come out at six to make great noise.!!
With pots and sticks' chase those evil spirits away..Like good girls and boys.' You' ll all be such bricks. (May it all sink in!)
The dark wood stretching from the shore,
nearby a rack filled with long oars,
ducks swim nearby in a long row,
towards the rocky beach they go.
Underfoot the dock shifts and sways,
responding to the gentle waves,
a little boy peers as the fish
zip underneath with a tail swish.
Old tires posted on each side,
so that boat hulls will not collide,
and bang up their expensive hulls,
right now they’re sporting lazy gulls.
Wood ladder nailed on to the end
for swimmers to return again...
I set my chair on this small peer,
to spend some quiet hours here.
Hey look, there’s an eagle…
I often write about the ocean. I went to see a museum exhibit, yesterday, “Dutch Art in a Global Age.” The paintings of sailboats on the sea caught my attention. Breathtaking and romantic, admired them up closely, then from the center of the room. One artist was Ludolf Bakhuizen and his painting was “Ships in a Gale on the IJ before the City of Amsterdam.”
THE STORM SWEPT THROUGH
the storm swept
through
sails white & gray
clouds
competing
ebb & flow
of catawampus rain
the heave-ho
of the hulls
crashing
on
malevolent waves
the sky falls
squeezes out
thunderous soak
cantankerous whitecaps
like
moon craters
rise & fall
cerulean hope
bleeds through
as
the sun bruises the
hullabaloo
lightning shows
off
a couple more
times
than its lullaby
hushes
and the boats
gently rock
as if the infant
is sound asleep
the sea is smooth
it is a smooth operator
a breathing body
of fickle water
The hulls of small boats
drop down into the morning fog
then return like rising seagulls.
The moored
slip in and out of the mist
then return painted
by a deep diving sky.
Sinking or flying, the small craft
slip through our vision
like leaking ghosts.
They roll upon an obscure air
shipping cloudy waves,
a swell last seen
in shipwrecked teacups.
Dim tunnels curve a segmented ocean.
Bat-winged feeding specters
browse glass. Scaly hulls
blow gas tanks. Rainbow skimmers
flick and soar.
A child’s sweet nose pressed
against a face so horrible,
bubbles of fear pop
in my brain.
Above us, jellyfish swim,
dendritic minds dangling.
tentacles of electric awareness.
Sharks circle waiting to be fed.
shark lovers, perhaps fantasying’
swimming in and out
of their bloody teeth.
It’s a movie - we gawp and admire,
shiver and savor
between margins of beauty
and grotesque gulping’s.
Red and blue squadrons
of directional floor arrows,
lead us out into the light -
a place that some believe
is a safer landscape.
Sub Categories
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.