Poetry Thursday

I seem to be alternating between one of mine and one from a poet I admire. Probably a bit cheeky to follow the illustrious Seamus Heaney with one of mine, but hey! this is my blog, so here is a relatively recent poem of mine.


Sea Lines

When I touched you first,
and you still with the salt and blood of birth
on you, slippery seal-child, I felt the pull.
Tides shifted in me.
My shoreline moved,
a sudden erosion,
whole chunks of me fell away,
dissolved,
and you filled the space.

Whenever I touched you since,
in all the holding, cradling times,
the rush and surge of your blood
was the sea’s pulse in my own heart,
your breath at times the gasp
of an ocean’s breeze, and my breath
willing itself into you.

Fear-nights, my hand on your brow,
the hot dry touch of sunwarm stone,
my heart beating fear, until the settling,
and the fever’s ebb, the rest
again, the calm,
the slow and easy flow of the sea.

Whenever I think of you now,
marking your own shore’s line,
I see you dragging a toe on sand,
claiming your space, and looking out,
turning your back to the land,
facing some other horizon.