Editor's Note: Congratulations to Tim Chamberlain for winning this month's competition. The theme for July was "message bottle at sea" and this piece paints a lovely picture detailing an unseen journey that we can only dream of.
...
Sent bobbing on waves long ago,
passing through sea trials unseen,
only to land unbroken, sleeping softly
amid sodden, sand-heaped, sea wrack,
– waiting for the tideline of time’s dead
reckoning to recede with rediscovery.
A rhumb line traced within a bottle,
India ink, crab-scripted, read several
centuries on; at long last, those crisp
rose wind compassed words heave to;
blown far off course, telling a tale of
unknown lives; – of seven shipmates
lost at sea, sending word unbeknown,
plotting a course, steered by the stars;
but, alas – sails split by time and tide,
mast broken, and an oar slipping away,
trailing off, hung over the gunwales;
a God forsaken final breath of goodbye.
Letting go – a cork rammed tight and
sealed with candle wax – set adrift,
floating rudderless, like another Marie
Celeste; long since run aground on
a sun-bleached reef, a salt encrusted
castaway, washed up, bearing sad tidings.
Their unlucky last words addressed to
loved ones long gone, expressing hopes
and prayers, now finally spoken aloud;
an empty echo of seven souls lost at sea,
their thirst-cracked voices telling of a
ship’s tender, passing into the ocean’s keep.
Sent bobbing long ago on waves, weathered;
sea trials of storm and calm, a sole survivor:
a bygone missive borne out of the deep;
a landfall made in lieu of seven broken
bodies, an empty shroud stitched from a
white paper sail, furled tight and bottled,
– only to become a beachcomber’s curio:
a relic borne by a returning wave, the voice
of seven souls who became one with the sea.
...
Tim Chamberlain is primarily a haiku poet who began publishing his short verse in small press magazines in the late 1990s. After a twenty year "haiku hibernation" he recently began submitting and publishing his haiku once again in on-line haiku magazines and on his blog, Shinobazu Pond 俳句. Originally from London, UK, he now lives in Tokyo, Japan.
Bluesky | @shinobazupond.bsky.social
Personal Blog | shinobazupond.blogspot.com
Winner of Oatleaf's July 2025 Poetry Competition.
Theme: Message Bottle at Sea