Sailing Home (a sea shanty)

By day, we chart our voyage by the sun,
in oceans where the sea’s ice blue,
by night we track the pole star’s run – 
while I’ve been thinking of you.

A fair wind for a fair maid, my song flies on the breeze;
one day soon, I’ll be back with you, back from foreign seas.

We’ve hoisted the mainsail many a time
to swerve gnarly, granite rocks;
dodged basking whales, drank salty brine
and even darned our own socks.

A fair wind for a fair maid, my song flies on the breeze;
one day soon, I’ll be back with you, back from foreign seas.

As in sailors’ favourite, ghostly tales,
some afternoons were breathless,
but our galleon girl, though ragged and frail,
sailed through them like an empress.

A fair wind for a fair maid, my song flies on the breeze;
one day soon, I’ll be back with you, back from foreign seas.

No albatross has cursed our voyage,
we’ve hardly seen a shark,
at journey’s end, we long for oarage
to speed on this limping bark.

A fair wind for a fair maid, my song flies on the breeze;
one day soon, I’ll be back with you, back from foreign seas.

Ever closer to the coast we venture,
and kittiwakes’ greeting calls,
I dream of you in fine gown and slippers
as homeward our vessel crawls.

A fair wind for a fair maid, my song flies on the breeze;
one day soon, I’ll be back with you, back from foreign seas.

Kim M. Russell, 10th April 2023 

Image found on Wikipedia

It’s Day 10 of NaPoWriMo and we’re one third of the way through.  I didn’t expect today’s prompt that, after watching both Fisherman’s Friends films, is a pleasant surprise. We sang sea shanties at school and I used to love the rousing ‘What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor’ and ‘Blow the Man Down’. Yes, our challenge is to write sea shanties, poems in the forms of songs, strongly rhymed and rhythmic, that sailors might sing while hauling on ropes and performing other sea-going labours. Our poems could be about anything, although some nautical phrases tossed into the chorus would be good for keeping the sea in our shanties.