Tag: ships

Poem ‘Boats’

Boats

One of these boats is mine,
let’s say this one right here,
all ship-shape
and eager for the tide.
So come on, take my hand
I’ll show you around,
there’s no time to lose
because summer’s on its way
and I can feel the warm winds
arrive on this scented ocean air,
promising to take us beyond
that blue-on-blue horizon
to those lands unimagined
in all our dreaming

We shan’t follow the tireless tern
who labours from pole to pole
every year of his life,
merely to survive.
No, ours are the balmy seas
and first port will be St Tropez.
We’ll saunter ’round as if we own it,
then sail slowly on hugging Italy’s leg
all the way to Venice,
where we’ll flop onto chairs in Florian’s,
order the most exorbitant espressos
and demolish bite-sized cakes

And after that? Well,
I propose we simply wander,
let the currents of nature and time
take us where they will.
Because you see, there are no plans,
no timetable.
We’ve earned this shot at life— at living—
this precious smiling space

poem and image © copyright df barker 2012

Poem ‘Weapon Take’

Weapon Take

No rusty blade
ever turns up here,
no shadow of a ship
or bejewelled belt;

no iconic helm
to add credence
to our wounded identity.
Not even signs

of a mystery hillock
rising in hugging mists
to excite or intrigue
those metal detector men.

Merely one vast industrial
scar, scoured of feature,
almost of life, tamed,
or destroyed,

depending on your view,
turned inside out
by Angevin priors
and inscrutable Dutchmen.

I come from a long
line of diggers
and dark-eyed women,
grown out of this morass,

hardened to sweat
and pitiless Ural winds.
People who made-do,
though never in

any doubt they
were the subjected
men of their Hundred,
the brave new Wapentake,

where the councillors
still speak in a
double-Dutch behind
tall, timbered walls.

poem and image © copyright dfbarker 2012
*poem first published in collection ‘Anonymous Lines’, available at amazon.

** Wapentake was the Danish word for the English Hundred (a small, political unit, originally meaning a hundred homes). This word is still used in the ‘Danelaw’ counties of eastern England.