Chasing Windmills

Slowly floating down the canal at Kinderdjik, we looked up amazed at the giant windmills. We were told that people lived in the windmills and there was a waiting list for those who wanted to live in one. It was a beautiful, serene site, the bank lined with reeds and ducks floating nearby.

About half-way down the row of Windmills, I looked up, surprised to see a young girl perched on small shelf peaking over the big steel wheel that turned the windmill into the wind. She seemed to find it interesting to watch all the tourists come and go wondering why they were so captivated by what she simply considered to be home.

As we approached, her mother, behind the reeds, was hanging their clothes on a line to dry. This is a much simpler life than most of us live. It is a wonderful place to come of age.

Looking up I see 

Girls’ shy eyes peering at us

Wash dries in sunshine

Photos: Dwight L. Roth

Merril’s Monday prompt for d’Verse is Looking Up.  Join us at: https://dversepoets.com

Kinderjik Girl on the Windmill

Who is that girl perched high on the wall

Peeking at us // she knows she won’t fall

Kinderjik girl lives in a windmill // right along the canal near by

Dreams her summer days away    watching tourists floating by

Doesn’t think it unusual to live in such a place

All her neighbors live in the same kind of space

As her mom hangs the family’s wash on the line

 She watches clouds floating and passes the time

Not much to do on a warm summer day

But dream of boys and while the time away

 

Photos: Dwight L. Roth

On our trip up the Rhine River last summer, we stopped at Kinderjik to see the windmills. It was a fascinating place to visit. They took us to a working windmill and showed us all around. On the way we passed several others, but the one with the little girl caught my camera’s eye!  All of the windmills have families living in them. We were told there is a waiting list for people wanting to live there.

 

Lilly Pads and Lotus Blossoms

 

Lotus blossoms float

Birds nest in wicker  above

New life all around

Photos: Dwight L. Roth

Frank Tassone asked us to write a Haikai poem about the beautiful lotus flower. These lotus flowers were growing in the canal in Kinderdjik.

Join us at: https://frankjtassone.com/2019/07/06/haikai-challenge-93-7-6-19-lotus-hasu-haiku-senryu-haibun-tanka-haiga-renga/

Wooden Shoe

What does the little boy do who lives in the mill

Watching blades turn and water pump;

Does he dream of sailing seas to far away lands

as his wooden shoe sailboat rests on mirrored glass?

He lives on a mound surrounded by water and flowers

With hayfields and redfox-horses to share the polder beyond

A solitary life with parents and siblings it seems

Goats in a pen and big cabbages to hoe as vegetables grow

What does the little boy dream with his toes in the stream

Perhaps his dreams are the same as yours and mine you know

Wooden shoes sit in a row waiting for night to pass

The sailboat shoe sits quietly on mirrored glass.

Photos of Kinderdjik: Dwight L. Roth

Kinderdijk Windmills

At Kinderdjik, near Rotterdam in the Netherlands, we visited the windmills. At the end of the canal we got a tour of the smallest windmill. The miller who lived explained how everything worked. Water is pumped from low areas and raised to higher canals which are then pumped over the dyke and into the sea by giant screws that lift thousands of gallons a minute. It was a most interesting tour. Families still live in most of the windmills.

Dutch windmills still pump

Reclaiming land from the sea

Miller lives in mill

Photos: Dwight L. Roth