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.
