Sea Poetry Quotes

“Every time I yelled my orders through the resurrected wind that howled in the rigging, the Kanaks replied with the only words I ever heard them say in English - "Aye, aye, sir!" - like a chorus responding to a solo. It might sound strange - even reckless - to say that we sailed into the storm with exhilaration, but there's no other word to describe our mood as, utterly drenched, we watched the waves toss around us, sending up huge sheets of flying foam that merged sea and sky. We'd double-robed the flying jib, but soon we had to drop all but the foresail to prevent the mast and rigging from going overboard. I lashed myself to the wheel as the vast waves thundered over us, clearing the deck, from bow to stern, of anything that wasn't strapped down. I stayed there for two days. I could have ordered one of the Kanaks to relieve me every four hours, but I didn't. Not because I didn't trust them, but because I had something to prove to myself. I think they understood that.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“I realized that I'd never thought passed the moment when I stood face to face with him again. I was a skilled sailor. I'd crossed the great oceans, but when it came to this, I felt like a newcomer to the world - not because I didn't know its busy, overcrowded ports, its palm-fringed coasts and wind-lashed rocks, but because I understood so little of my own soul. I could navigate from a chart; I could determine my position using a sextant. I was in an unknown place in the Pacific on a ship with no captain and I could still find my way. But I had no way of mapping my own mind or the course of my life.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“The lights of the town
distant across the harbour
I am one of those
who were unable to sleep
– the sentience of Time
beneath a shoreless sea of drifting stars

while you were woven to the moon
And you –

You were the ocean
and we were the land
You lay down unflinching
You lay down forgetting
And you were the ocean
and we were the land”
― Tamara Rendell, Mystical Tides

“Clear blue sky,
Mirroring the calm sea—
I'm a fish, got hooked.”
― Ritu Negi, Cherry Blossoms: A Haiku Poetry Book

“Ebb and Flow by Stewart Stafford

Happiness, briefest harbour in a squall;
Tempests funnel us to splintered docks,
High-seas missions to a last port of call,
Fading feast taste of a haven of stasis.

Weather springs with raging misprision,
All things far beyond fingertip calculation,
If we go off course with Fool's Gold vision,
The reefs of avarice shall starkly claim us.

We set sail or are torn from fragile sanctuary,
All these stays, noted in the strangers' ledger,
The Fate Morgana's captain - marine actuary,
Virtual kin crew with fish and fowl companions.

© 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford