Long Whalers Poems

Moby Dick, a novel by Herman Melville, published in London in October 1851 as The Whale and a month later in New York City as Moby-Dick; or, The Whale. It is dedicated to Nathaniel Hawthorne....

Read More

LIGHT VERSE AND NONSENSE VERSE III

The Humpback
by Michael R. Burch

The humpback is a gullet
equipped with snarky fins.
It has a winning smile:
and when it SMILES, it wins
as miles and miles of herring
excite its fearsome grins.
So beware,...

Read More

With canoe and hook of a jawbone
  below a great fish Maui snared,
and his brothers half-crazed behaving
  leapt and gouged in frenzy craving.
From Palliser Bay to Cape Reinga 
 (departing place of the...

Read More

The Moby Dick Reunion 


One hundred fifty nine years have passed
Since Melville published his novel.
Seven hundred twenty pages in length
Some say it was much too nautical. 

All of the characters have gathered.
They’re going to have...

Read More

The sea pig wandered aimlessly through the straits of Gibraltar where once upon a time she had seen the pillars of Hercules standing proudly in that so long ago forgotten age

She sighed and swam on...

Read More

Humpback beauties call to their young
Communicating to calves so precious 
Don't be so immediately audacious
You can wander, just don't go too long

Blubberous parents are there to keep them close
For companionship, warmth and learning 
Send each...

Read More

'Thar she blows!' the cry goes up
a breaching whale is seen
The longboat's manned and low'red
the lookout's eyes were keen

The hunt begins, the whalers chant
the oarsmen strain and pull
The whaling ship won't turn for port
'til her...

Read More

A Whaling Tale

by Gabriel Magno

The whaling ships approach as I stare into the bay,
today I said by short farewells, to friends who pled I stay. 

A whaler I have dreamt to be, since I stood...

Read More

When Whitman said
make your life a song,
had he spoken to old whalers?
Did they tell him of nights becalmed
on a pacific salty sea,
when no sound of lapping waves,
or rope stressed wood,
could interfere with the silence in...

Read More

THE SNOW and coarse wind both plunge down over oceans
Unbound and unmeasured by obstinate sailors
Who drift while confronting ungrappled emotions
Like obdurate petrels and stoical whalers. 

Imprisoned ashore on a cliff is the mourner
Whose wings have...

Read More

THE EDGES WERE RAVELED
I COULD MAKE OUT THE
 AUTHERS SIGNATURE
I MEASURED THE SIZE
AND FOUNDED WHAT
I HAD CAME TO SEE
THE ORGINAL " DUEX dE gRITT"
BY dIZZIE cAULIER GRUMP
I cOULDN'T BELEIVE WHAT WE WERE SEEING
A VISION FROM...

Read More

Legends abound from society to society
But Norwegians have one that evokes great anxiety

A mythical sea monster of immense proportions
May be fifty-feet long, or its size has some distortions

With enormous tentacles it’s said to have grabbed...

Read More

Last Fall, my church's Scouts and I went hiking.

A few miles north of Big Sur’s coast,
There is a forested park much to our liking.

Point Lobos is the nature preserve that I love most.


The beauty there...

Read More

Non-Coercive World

'Liberty', your name on every tongue.
Your lips carry the Call of all-along...
From deep within our breast,
Wherein our thoughts do rest...
And percolate in solitude,
Above the teaming multitude...
Exhorting us to become ourselves;
To go deep within- shun...

Read More

(After Charles Baudelaire)

Many a time, to amuse themselves, the sailors 
would trap an albatross, make it a slave. 
(These ruffians manned those old-time deep-sea whalers, 
resenting, but indented to, the waves). 

The moment that an...

Read More

Whaler’s fate

Several submarines disappeared,
without a trace in the greatest, World War two,
ancient mariners of the Yankee race,
still dive’s and surface’s too,

a time shift to century twenty first,
6 torpedoes wait to run,
on the deck a 5...

Read More

Blue Whale is an internet game involving a series of 
tasks that end in suicide, invented by Philipp Budeikin. 

Blue Whale

It appears 
in Budeikin’s brain.
Its baleen plates will filter 
the worthless krill from society,
he envisages.
Swimming...

Read More

A placid Ocean ripples; with
undulating hypnotic waves.
In Her depth's eternal embrace
lies the bodies of kings and slaves.

Exposing forgotten treasures,
Her windswept breakers seed the shore.
And hint at what still lies submerged,
deep within Her ebony core.

She is...

Read More

Some people think knots are for boy scouts and sailors
Cowboys, hangmen,Anglers and whalers
But knots have many jobs to do
To make this point I'll name a few

turning two heavy ropes into one?
The Carrick bend will get...

Read More

The Whalers 

There is a perfect hideaway
Down by the southern shore. 
It overlooks the ocean
Where giant breakers roar

Was from this port, in days gone by
The whalers plied their trade
There was no shame in honest toil
How...

Read More

That’s what the Ground hogs whistle:
‘hell or high water’
then they put on their old-timey spectacles
and the glasses slip 
to the end of their stubby snouts.

The squirrels climb too high 
for the lower depths of Hades...

Read More

I dreamt you
in golden threads of sunlight;
streaming, dancing, mingling with
azure waters...

dreamt you calling,
singing out my name in your regal orcan tongue...

dreamt you in each face that peered
from liquid silver seas...

dreamt your body's etheric touch
amidst cool...

Read More

The roll of the waves hides the arcs of their backs.
The shoal of porpoises are feeding on squid.
Feasting amongst them on cephalopod snacks
Are green-scaled dragons that choose to be hid.

They hide from whalers and their...

Read More

To the discerning eye of Inuit travelers, hunters and whalers, the inukshuk communicates pivotal counsel on safety and danger.

                ...

Read More