Matchboxes: The Origins of my Travel-Bug?

Before I entered my teens, I used to love beach-combing whilst walking the dog along the tide-line beside the Solent towards Warsash, collecting flotsam and jetsam, and matchboxes with labels from all over the world. Here are the labels from a few, thrown overboard from ocean-liners. Symbols of freedom and voyages to exotic places!

From "On the Origins of My Travel-Bug"

I think of Southampton.

Summer holidays.

Maybe it was

The matchbox labels

The exotic boxes

Washed up on the shore

From all over the world

With the flotsam and jetsam

From trawlers and transatlantic liners.

We walked the beach

To Warsash

Combing the tide-line,

Restless, curious.

Maybe it was those matchbox labels,

Or the boats forever leaving,

Those ships all setting out to sea

On voyages, mind-voyages...

The ships, lit up

Along their decks,

Waiting for their freedom.

Such an air of expectation!

***

Another variation on the same theme:

Matchbox Labels

I walk the beach

Beside the Solent,

As ocean liners come and go

(Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth!)

I know their flags, their draft, displacement.

I collect the jetsam

Thrown overboard,

Flotsam from the ends of the earth.

Matchbox after matchbox,

The labels show exotic places,

Strange languages and signs.

Once I found some old brass kit-

A navigator’s aid.

Beside the Solent

Something lit inside-

The burning need to travel.

”I ain’t got no matches

But I got so far to go-

Would a matchbox hold my clothes?”

***

Matchbox, Carl Perkins (YouTube)