Top 10 Best Ship, Sail & Boat Poems
The sea, it could be supposed, is made for poetry (or the other way around). The rhythm of waves lapping at the shore, of a boat rocking to and fro. The drifting of free verse, the mooring of form. Add the epic nature of the ocean or the simple romantic essence of water, and the sea is just waiting for poetry to sail in. Enjoy ten great poems about ships, sailing, and boats.
1. Bon Voyage
We’ve gathered on the dock. Mother wears a custom-made
suit, bold black and white checks, the skirt fitted tight. My
sister and I teeter beside her, two untethered buoys, dresses
buoyant in the breeze. With her hand shading her eyes, Mother
watches the ship, a sailing city crammed with waving couples
against a white, white exterior. Bon Voyage, Bon Voyage, we cry
to friends of Mother’s, the wife barely recognizable
beneath a veiled hat. Corks burst from champagne bottles;
shrieks as the bubbling liquid pours over hands and arms. The
ship departs with an exaggerated HONK. We huddle in the back
seat of the car. Let’s pretend we’re sleeping on the
ship’s deck chairs, we whisper, and imagine the evening
growing colder. Perhaps we’d cling together, our shivering
bodies wrapped in widely-striped towels. Two girls alone on a
boat, the water black and rushing past, lips salty.
— Tina Barry, from Mall Flower
2. Journey
The sails unfurl
the cries ring in the air,
the ship is on the waves of curls.
Ship rides o’er seas of pearl
while dragon rests in lair,
the sails unfurl.
Setting off to lands of kings and earls
the sailors eat some pears,
the ship is on the waves of curls.
One seaman’s known to love a girl
one boy climbs up a mount, on dare,
the sails unfurl.
Some on the ship have seen Arur,
a family has a small pet bear,
the sails unfurl
the ship is on the waves of curls.
— by Sara Barkat, at age 12
3. Estrella
Sometimes when the night comes on
and Venus rises bright over the river,
I think I can see a boat floating white
in the mist, and my heart opens
with a fainting motion, laying back
on its bed of flesh.
Oh, to see the boat, going its way
towards the great, unfathomable sea.
—L.L. Barkat, author of Love, Etc.: Poems of Love, Laughter, Longing & Loss
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4. Surface Tension
In the park, a pond aflame
with painted wooden boats
plucks us from our way
to someplace else. And though
the pond, when we draw close,
is less a pond than a low,
wide fountain, and the boats
elaborate miniatures,
toys rented by the hour
to girls in ruffles and boys
with serious faces,
we only like it more.
—How often, how needlessly,
we complicate pleasure
with the pursuit of pleasure.
So for an hour or so
we let the basin swell
sea-wide. We clamber on
the banks with the children
we are not, clapping with them
to see the sails. And when
that blue craft we’ve named ours
glides out too far for sticks
to call it back, how grateful
we are (though we know
there’s nothing really to lose)
for the breeze that we can’t feel
that sends it sailing home.
—Chelsea Rathburn, from A Raft of Grief
5. O Captain! My Captain!
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
— Walt Whitman
The family pontoon attempts
to usurp dominant contrast
though your twin brother sticks out
his chest like a gangster—
your father’s fedora
slopes too close to his nose.
Straight as the safety railing,
your older brother locks hands
on hips. He manages
a squint for the camera.
The boat blushes mimosa pink
to be upstaged by such a young girl
on a summer day meant for boating—
not the boasting of calves, thighs, shins,
white as cottonwood blossoms,
long as drooping pines spilling out
of timber trucks.
O those legs kill the middle,
crown themselves the dominant
and hold up the body
that’s grown into the body I love—
the same quizzical eyes
which quicken me
when the camera shutter
blinks.
— Dave Malone, author of O: Love Poems From the Ozarks
I
The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.
II
Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, thro’ its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!
— Robert Browning
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8. The Vessel On My Uncle’s Arm
Its mysterious script,
gun-barrel-blue, moving
as he steered the fragile spokes
of my small hand while the locomotive
moved forward like a planet
yawing into the roundhouse.
The gear sounds, jangle and prang
of steel, were the winds I saw
pushing against the sails,
the curl of the bow wave
as the sea reclaimed it, two ships,
iron and ink, that moved me along,
engines turning engines.
He is still with me, the blue skin
of sail, like an artful vein
running through my life. It renders
the shadows of the moon like storms
and brings me the Sun Boat at daybreak.
From the fine lines of its prow
I notice how stalwart are
the weightless birds at feeders
in the pouring rain; I see mountains
scored and rising over trackshine,
miraculous in a sea of sky,
where clouds of sparrows turn like a serif.
— Richard Maxson
9. The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage
But not on a shell, she starts,
Archaic, for the sea.
But on the first-found weed
She scuds the glitters,
Noiselessly, like one more wave.
She too is discontent
And would have purple stuff upon her arms,
Tired of the salty harbors,
Eager for the brine and bellowing
Of the high interiors of the sea.
The wind speeds her on,
Blowing upon her hands
And watery back.
She touches the clouds, where she goes,
In the circle of her traverse of the sea.
Yet this is meagre play
In the scrurry and water-shine,
As her heels foam—
Not as when the goldener nude
Of a later day
Will go, like the centre of sea-green pomp,
In an intenser calm,
Scullion of fate,
Across the spick torrent, ceaselessly,
Upon her irretrievable way.
— Wallace Stevens
10. Sailboat
Strange flight, the body
Held at a threshold
And never quite freed
Or quite revealed—
One wing taut with wind,
One wing concealed
Until the wind grows calm
And it shimmers in a shadow-world,
The shape of a sail, yet softer—
The drifting boat
A bird half in air,
Half in water.
— Heather Allen, from Leaving a Shadow (featured in our title How to Write a Poem)
Photo by Cristian Iohan Ştefănescu, Creative Commons license via Flickr. Poems used with permission of the publisher or author or are in the public domain.
How to Write a Poem uses images like the buzz, the switch, the wave—from the Billy Collins poem “Introduction to Poetry”—to guide writers into new ways of writing poems. Excellent teaching tool. Anthology and prompts included.
“How to Write a Poem is a classroom must-have.”
—Callie Feyen, English Teacher, Maryland
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Tina Barry says
Thank you for including “Bon Voyage” in your roundup! I appreciate your thinking of me and love being in such great company!
Best,
Tina
Rick Maxson says
Thanks, LW for including my poem “The Vessel On My Uncle’s Arm.” I had forgotten about it. I hope he can read it from wherever his spirit resides. He was a great and humble man.
Dave Malone says
Fabulous montage…as our boats journey toward the great unfathomable sea!