Windjammer

Leaf 128 – Reflections

 

The Shoal Fisher, Newlyn (Penlee House Gallery & Museum)

This poem is perhaps a coda to the triptych of poems I wrote and posted here previously, inspired by three well-known paintings: by Friedrich (Leaf 125), Turner (Leaf 126), and Waterhouse (Leaf 127). Although this poem was written without reference to any particular painting or other work of art. Instead, it took a word as its inspirational motif. 

“Windjammer” was a slightly derogatory term for a sailing ship which was predominantly used in the last days of sail as the nineteenth century transitioned into the twentieth century. I’m not sure if this short poem is necessarily any more optimistic than the self-reflective melancholy that’s characteristic of the Romanticism which certainly tinges all three of my previous poems, but it is perhaps not so pessimistic in the simple point of fact that it wonders if, at some point in the future, a return of sorts might perhaps be possible. I shall leave it up to the reader to decide …

 

 

White sails,

darkened with soot;

– one day,

the windjammers

may well return.