Trawlers Poems

Vanished

Facing global warming and climate change;
many species will vanish from the Earth.
Most don't seem concerned, and I find that strange;
being tethered to this planet from birth.

Whales might never swim our oceans again;
reefs are dying and may never return.
And we will lose vital links in life's chain
when the glaciers melt and the forests burn.

Tigers, jaguars, panthers, and leopards,
all the endangered cats, will disappear.
They'll die off, killed by ranchers and shepherds,
and their numbers are decreasing each year.

In seas where bottom trawlers aren't banished;
like a magician, Nature has vanished.

Sitka Sunset

ruddy trawlers creak 
as fire strummed whitecaps compose- 
seagulls lock their wings 
sage eyes, pursed in wry wrinkles 
squint toward salt misted shards 

 syllables 5-7-5-7-7

Mural

Once almost a little village
Within the city’s bounds,
Huddled around the fish dock
With its own smells and sounds,
Streets of rows of terraces
All well kept and neat,
Pride shining through
Every worker Street.

Deckies, Filleters, Bobbers
All closely living there, 
The Skippers and Mates
Breathing more refined air. 
Overalled fish house workers 
Mingle with and meet
Segged clogged bobbers
In the early morning street.

Then they pulled down terraces
Replaced with industrial estates
Rehoused to the city’s fringes 
Splitting up families and mates.
And the fishing industry died
Trawlers tied up in the dock
And old Hessle Road trembled
Nearly died from the shock.

No more deckies, filleters, bobbers
All the fish houses long gone
As this once vibrant area 
Learned to adapt and move on.
The once thronged Hessle Road
Seems near deserted these days
As the population slowly adapts
To the area’s very different ways.

Rayners, the fisherman’s pub,
Struggling to survive,
Has mementos of the fleet
To help keep its memory alive.
In an ironical gesture,
Sadly surveying  it all,
There’s a mural of a trawlerman
Painted on a gable end wall.

The Past Is a Thought Away

The past is a thought.

The coastal fishing town in Peru was charming
its upland was bare and light brown, with roads 
looking like scars caused by a triple Bye-Pass.
The sky was enormous, the biggest ever seen
but was unmotivated, not a cloud around.
Teresa is a short, lovely woman in well-filled jeans.
Ah, jeans, one wishes for the skirt’s reappearance.
We hired a car and drove up the bare hills.
The driest of landscapes weighted down by dust
Tiny villages, four houses and a cantina, not a place
for the young, Lima was their dream.
At the top of a hill, we stopped, and afar the Pacific
glittering green living up to its name.
We were in love, the transient kind disappearing
in the morning light; told each other lies and enjoyed
the sweetness of dreams.
We drove back before darkness, the road narrow.
Teresa worked at night, with many trawlers docking.
A stolen moment by two people whose youth had 
passed us by, but we remember how sweet it was.

My Boat

My boat


A small boat moving through choppy water.

Prompt from "Grief" by Raymond Carver 


Some sail in yachts
Some relax on cruise ships
Some transport fruit on cargo ships 
Some are fishing in trawlers
Some refugees seek asylum
Some toil with nuclear reactors
Some wear military uniforms
Some honeymoon in new lands.

A few are in Boaty Mcboatface.

My little rowing boat has sprung a leak.

We are not all in the same boat
But we are on same sea.

30 June 2022
Sponsor	Julia Ward
Contest Name	SAILING

September Moorings

Slips marked and mapped across the intercoastal waterways
 a scanning breached out of high low tidal waves,
silent, still, obscure, and not well hidden
 liveaboards hold steady isolated sheltered misgivings;
embedded and anchored in place
 buoys secure contested living space,
Matanzas Pass, Sarasota fields, Titusville and Sunset Bay
 the Gulf Stream Key Largo flow a mainstay;
honker down between the wind, the rain, and sun
 vessels sturdy and rickety, short and long - all come, 
house and home hum interludes for a sing-along,
 push aways and pull in tights
safeaways and derelicts amidst stormy plights
 resident and transient, occupied and abandoned
faceless vacancies, sequestered and random,
 marinas and harbors within hurricane holds in tandem,
dockmasters and dock slips. environmental folds alluring
 beleaguered and bewildered landlocked sailors touring
in their trawlers, boats, cruisers and yachts adoring
 September shelters in the Florida moorings.

But Something Happened

The breakwater of youth dims again
As I recall that fateful evening

Every gushing tide moaned
Revising the secrecy of a time

When drunken trawlers held me
In my contorted form, lightly assailed

A skirt in tatters, my locks disheveled
Where a girl's yell found no choice

But to camouflage it in the dark
And voices flinched in waves

' Shh, nothing ever happened,'
While I raced out of the bleak shoreline.




What Was Left Unsaid Contest
Sponsored by Line Gauthier
Fiction   April 19,2019

There the Reckoning

Where the earth, 
either scorched or drowned,
meets the fire of war 
or the floods of indifference,
where the sky,
once pristine, now flight-scarred,
meets the trawlers and the oil rigs
on the dying sea,
and the righteousness
that you wore as an amulet
became a millstone
that you could not bear.
Where the industrial heartlands,
robust and cruel,
run feverishly to or from the inner cities,
painful, seething and morose,
where the last suburban outliers,
fading and sanctimonious,
meet the first agricultural small-holdings,
desperate, stoic and resilient,
and you happened upon wealth
too bountiful to be shared,
but mostly succumbed
to the will of the mightier few.
There waits The Serpent,
there waits the heel of The Chosen One,
there waits the reckoning
that no malevolence can escape,
buried so deep within you
that they can never be seen or found.

28th December 2018

A Haiku Anthology

*************

the human race
how many subspecies
do you know

orange sunsets
they were once all red
the status quo

housemartins... late
nesting on a window pane
swallows in the porch

dunnock feeding
on suet balls for the ****
goldfinch on niger

smooth newts... fifty plus
til the lawned was mowed
no pond for miles

facts of life
humans make them up
not natures ways

sun skipped the surface
light dancing on the waves
then came the trawlers

the sky ablaze
the sea reflecting fire
seagulls screaming

honey bees dying
mites and climate changing
stop pollution now

mountains moving
hot rocks cruising on a plate
shapes shifting

the rushing rivers
rapids... falls... always searching
returning home

clouds carry rivers
waterfalls biding time
flash flooding

nature... world's doctor
twenty-four seven... open
inundated

**************

Spring Time

How lovely lies this gentle season's face,
upon the fields and plains that fore were cold.
her sway turns winter scenes to days of gold.
Renewing life for trees and kind with grace,

Now she adorns tall mountain peaks with lace
oft melting snow that glisten streams of old
This breeze that rustles sylvan glades untold
returns to home the geese of former place

The ocean's fury quiet close to shore,
responds in like to sweet Elysian dreams              
The sailor keeps appointment times once more,
and trawlers ply their trade again as yore
Springtime with great imbuing force it seems
can tame the wildest ocean scene of roar
3-24-18

Sonnet To Spring

How lovely lies this gentle season's face,
upon the fields and plains that fore were cold.
Renewing life for trees and kind with grace,
her sway turns winter scenes to days of gold.

Now she stirs amid mountain peaks on high,
oft melting snow to glisten streams and lakes.
This breeze that rustles sylvan glade with sigh,
returns to home the geese and mallard drakes.

The ocean's fury quiet close to shore,
responds in like to sweet Elysian dreams.
The sailor keeps appointment times once more,
and trawlers ply their trade again in teams.

Springtime with great imbuing grace to heal,
your humble peasant deigns this time to kneel
7-3-17

New Year's Resolutions - Angler's Ambitions

A happy new year needs a new resolution 
To sort out my lifestyle - to find a solution
I'll stop fishing each day - from dawn until dusk
I should be proactive - not follow blind luck

I'll train a new workforce to catch more and more fish
A new angle on angling towards my new wish
I'll start a fish stall at the town's fishing market
And set my own quota to meet my fish target

I'll swap my old rod for an old fishing boat
For more and more fishing to keep us afloat
Then take a fair loan from a fair weather friend
A fleet of fish trawlers - expand and extend

I'll promote my fish brand with fish fingers and toes
Fish knees and fish eyebrows, fish legs and elbows
And market a franchise to build a store chain
Of shops inside shop malls to make a large gain

And when I am richer I'll hold a big auction
To sell my big business to make a big fortune
I'll buy a big mansion next to a big lake
And go back to fishing - my passion - my ache 




Entry to "new year's resolution" contest - written "subconsciously" as required (honest!)

Written 1st January 2017 - not coincidentally!

Gone With the Wind

Gone with the wind.....

When I walk along on the ocean shore
my old memories swirling in my mind
Recollect my days when I was with you
We held our hands and walked together
while your head rest on my shoulder
While cool sea breeze touches on us
While the splashing waves wash our feet
While the rushing water roll over the rocks
While the fishermen with sail boat fishing in the sea
While the ships and trawlers sail in the deep sea
While the sea gulls wheeled and shrieked in the sky
While the hawks hover on the wind
While the sun slowly disappear in the sky
On those days everything made me beautiful
because you were near to me
But today I see everything remains same as it is
except your love and soul that's gone with the wind.
Your sudden death brought me shock and tears
Today, you made me alone and I miss you so much
Let me pray for your soul to rest in peace.

Ravi Sathasivam / Sri Lanka
All rights are reserved @ 2016 Ravi Sathasivam

Sustainable Fishindustry

Sustainable Fishing 
Theirs`s were small fishing vessels with painted eyes on 
the bow, the eyes of cunning 
The men went out early to catch the biggest fish with 
hooks and line and at what landlubbers called dawn 
they were back with the seas harvest 
Best price, their predawn caught of fresh fish.
Sometimes the catch was small yet enough to set food
on the table for the children and a few glasses of wine 
for the fisherman and provider 
Trawlers with big nets came this is business of today
and never mind tomorrow.
 A sustainable tradition had come to an end
 the new master didn’t think of the future today 
the morrow can take care of itself.
Not many fishermen`s left in the bay they are mostly 
old and their catch is enough for dinner of the day
keeping the ghost of hunger at bay

Fishwives

Fishwives 

In junkets to 
     the golden shore 
Beside the cobalt 
     sea of lore 
Was told of dwellings 
     and rapscallions
Of ramshackled wood 
     and galleons.
Where ancient mariners 
     and the breeze
Sailed upon 
     the unknown seas,
Where wives and fish, 
     in nets, were caught, 
And the spoils of labour 
     sold and bought, 
And 'neath the starry skies 
     would sing 
Of trawlers and 
     the nets they'd fling,
Starboard bow 
     and guillemot peck
The flapping herring 
     upon oily deck.
Where wives and fish, 
     of griddle and broth 
Spit and cuss 
     in their beery froth, 
And carving ships 
     in dry whalebone 
The men, of gods 
     and serpents, moan. 
By dark, by habit, 
     by candle lit 
Gather in separate 
     huddles, sit,
Weary lines upon 
     a salty thread
Weave and knot 
     their minds to bed.
To dream of junkets 
     to a golden shore 
Where told of dwellings 
     that are no more, 
Where supper served 
     in a driftwood dish
Would taste as sweet 
     as wives and fish.

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