Sea shanty for a ship in a bottle by Jenny McRobert

 


 

Making the transition from Psychologist to poet has been Jenny McRobert’s most pleasurable journey. Despite the disadvantage of being taught it at school, poetry has been her lifelong passion. She has always known it, though her career demanded writing of a different sort (Psychology textbooks and articles). Now she has migrated to a land that she loves, has spent the past five years developing as a poet.

Recently published poems are: ‘Touched’ Picaroon Poetry Issue: #12 May 2018, ‘Jezebel’ Ink Sweat and Tears October 2018,‘Silver Samovar’ (highly commended by Winchester Writers Festival) and ‘Bakelite Blintzes’ both in The High Window, Issue: #13 Spring 2019, and ‘Dragonfly’ Words for the Wild, April 2019. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sea shanty for a ship in a bottle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I dream of the salt-breeze heavy in my sails,

like the sorrow of angels dancing on my deck

 

I shun the stretching spyglass of land,

my craving is far from the homes of men

 

who doff their wobble-headed hats to the shore

and show no fear in their merry-footed splashing,

 

but soon her great hand scrapes the sky

and scatters the toes from their fast-running feet

 

a tantrum of house-high waves shakes and splits

their hearts of oak that turn to balsa.

 

O cry for the silken, fat-wadded gentlemen,  

shed snowy tear drops for their pearly ladies

 

and hear their songs bedded down in the sea,

that only newly deaf shells can hear.

 

My decks are not mopped by Jack Tar’s foam,

they’re dry and bleached into brittle splinter-waves.

 

My sight bounces off fat-fingerprinted walls,

as they raise me up from my dusty bed. 

 

She is old, but she still holds her mystery,

as coy and tight as a virgin’s skirts,

 

but the handsome-fast frigate that I was

would forgive her all for just one salty kiss.

 

 

Jenny McRobert

 

Dragonfly by Jenny McRobert

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