Not a scrap of progress on Flamingo as the house extension project consumes all my spare time… but she’s always there, in my mind… and sometimes she spills out into words that I grandly call poetry…😄 so here they are…

Tugging

I feel her tugging at the edges of my thoughts, in that dark closed space between waking and dreams

I use her image to calm the nights terrors. The what ifs and should haves, the sweat necked screams 

It’s always sunny where she rests, and warmed, I hunker down in the form she presses in my heart.

Explore the gentle swelling curves of her, the scent, the touch, each joint and juncture a piece of art

Is this her purpose, to still my mind?

Her stasis a small price to pay.

Or does she long and pine for the brine,

The seagulls cry and the wild salt spray?

and another…

Hulk

What cherished hulk is here

What chubby lines, lazy sheer

Who’s lady is this

This nautical Miss

Tarp sheltered

Summer sun sweltered

Pitch pine sweating

Oak frames Not getting

Any younger.

Does she hunger

for the blue?

The Green?

Or would this lonely queen

Be content

To be sent

On a slipway sliding

softly gliding

Into east coast mud brown waves

Who will give her the freedom she craves 

Who will tap a plank declare her sound

Haul a line and opine

She’s well found

Who will stoke the little stove

and head below hove

To, in the Sound, and safe

For a brew

Before bearing away

Away away

North, South east or west 

Any which way 

But loose!

Plans

The extension has a way to go yet so there’ll be very little to report from the ‘boatyard’ however I’m planning to upgrade the ramshackle lean to shed complex next to Flamingo so that when I finally have boatbuilding time on my hands I’ll have a decent workshop on hand too. Or as like to call it, my retirement home!

that’s all folks!