I Just Might

 It calls to me at night.


The soothing hush is no match,

for the draw of the same pulse and roar.

It mesmerises with its might.

And I might, (I just might)

slip off down the alley,

bed-robed and barefoot,

pick over obstacles, 

ghostfaced and quiet

to arrive tea in hand to:


the bench on the harbour.

The distant clang of buoys,

the slaps of seductive slop

against darkened hulls.


The water is black and so is my desire to jump;

to swim, my flukes guttering in the moonlight.


Master Frank lolls, experience bestowed 

and impossible to surprise,

but young Sea Pie of Cultra stirs;

once sleeping eyes now peephole wide 

at spying Poseidon’s Daughter.

The water calls to pour down delighted spine,

shivers controlled by a peaceful mind.

Sensation of flying freely sublime.

Expansion of perception and deceptive passage of time.


The sea is all loving, all taking, all giving.

I am it and we are we

but duty calls me back to shore.


My tea is cold.

My cigarette: ashes.

My odious feet and unforgivable legs are numb.

Land sick, land locked, land thrown.

Gravity greedily reclaims my blubbersome, goose pimpled flesh

I stumble home; graceless, ungainly, exhausted.

Guiding unwilling, unnatural limbs up stairs of all things!

But, to bed; satiated, salinated, and sanctified.


 Suffocated

by the solidity 

of the Earth. 

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