Seabird

There was a time before these brown buildings
touched the sky at the same point
as the trees.
She does not remember it
but many of the other gulls record the fact
so mournfully;
as high pitched
folk songs.
It used to be
much warmer here,
and greener.
A flight from
woods to
sea
much more
beautiful.

She, of course
has never seen
the water,
its glistening
has yet to
blind her
beads
at the break
of dawn
in August.

Yet somehow
she knows
that she will
find her way
there,
when the longing
grows so deep
that she
can no longer sing
a folk song
about an ocean
that she
cannot
smell.

nursery rhymes that make you jump

you possessed only a small wooden boat.
you swam. boy could you swim. you could swim the length and breadth and depth of the atlantic and you would need no rest. you could make it. that much you knew.
if the going got tough you could stretch yourself out like a lily pad and float yourself home, adrift, awake; aware.
your words broke in fibonacci wave sequence; your thoughts mirrored ebbs and flows of tidal movements.
your hair caught in the plug of the deep blue sea and so you chopped it off with an old cracked shell.
you sang ' tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor' as i jumped to an old blue skipping rope. beat after beat held us locked in an ancient hypnotic rhyme.
you knew not what it all could mean and so you jumped.

you possessed only a small wooden boat.

orders for sailing

you are a young mermaid
in mourning.


you have swept your long tresses into a knot as a sign that you are grieving.

a loss you never dreamed that you would suffer
before your wedding day.

a loss the other sea girls,
that swim
and dance
and sing
with you
-could never hope
to understand.

for your loss is not
for some human on
the shore,

nor some merman on
the rocks.

you are a young
mermaid
and you
are in mourning

for an old, old man.

a man whose hairs of grey
grow tangled
like the seaweed
in your boudoir.
a man you love
in that
beautiful,
ancestral
way.

a man
that played the accordion
(but only in your dreams of him).
a man that
sat with you and
talked of the gods
in ancient greece
and that really knew
what it was all about
(and that cared.)
a man who swam the shore
with you
alongside an old, rusty train
and made the small
things seem so beautiful.

the smell of kippers in the early morn,
rags found lovingly with you (in boxes)
- in an old salvation army shop.

tall tales of
shipyards
and a land
of maple trees.

you are a young mermaid.

you mourn the loss of a man not quite dead; not quite here.
yet in your dreams
you still listen
to a beautiful,
melodic shanty
in which you are a lily
that holds a lantern
while an old, old man
plays
the accordion.

loss, or- an old red box

you used to have an old red box
that you would dismiss
two small people
down
to raid
on sunday mornings
so that you
could hide yourself
under the covers
for another hour.
these two small people
are no longer
small
now.
and all of the
gold and silver
that you hid
in that locked
red chest
would not
allow you to have
another of
their
sundays;
ever again.