“where the storm-clouds swallow,
And the sound of your oar-blades, falling hollow”
The fishermen are all at sea, gone
for days where they keep a home
on the wild white waters.
Leaving with eyes fixed
a last tug of land - house, garden
and waving wives distant as dots.
Only laundered shirts on lines
and bright wool jumpers still gesticulate
gaily coloured, like Tibetan flags, prayers
carried fresh and salty in an offshore wind
drying tears and washing.
Grace is hosting open link night and since I missed Melissa’s Poetics prompt on Tuesday I’m linking here instead, whereby our poetry is ekphrastic and inspired by a choice of Egon Schiele landscapes. This is his ‘Houses with Laundry (Suburb II) (1914’). Title and epigraph from Rudyard Kipling’s “Harp song of the Dane women”
PoetryPix 