Mermaid Crawl by DarkWorkX - Pixabay
Thanks to editor Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin for including my poem A Sea Spell in the latest issue of Cyphers Magazine. For anyone missing the sea the poem below is a combination of two sonnets about a trip to Greystones a couple of years ago.
A Sea Spell
Greystones, August
2018
On
the journey to the coast we cut through
the
hillsides, tunnels locked us in darkness
while
the crescent of the bay grew and grew
as
the train escaped its urban harness.
We
had gone there seeking peace and healing,
desperate
in the search for clarity
to
find hushed lapping waves reassuring,
their
rhythmic to and from – sanctuary.
I
saw that the beach belonged to the birds,
to
their curling, warbling wailing and song
and
discovered open, widened wing-glides
and
I too was free to breach in soaring.
I
could have laid down on the sand, not stone,
nor
shell, human, evolved, remembering.
Two
girls walked the front. They stopped now and then
to
look in the dunes for a certain kind
of
fine weed, (eelgrass, wild oat or marram),
stooped
search bagging a later labelled find.
We
stood before the bewitching green sea,
shifting
in its shade and always calling,
lulled
under the enchantment of its spell,
its
timelessness tempered by jagged rocks,
basalt
paved inlets and coves siren swell,
the
bobbing head of a seal the selkie,
mermaid,
merman, the sun and the moon clocks,
forgetfulness
in vision, in dreaming.
A
dog’s distant bark jolted consciousness
as
wraith-like water tightly embraced us.
I found it hard to leave, still
can’t let go.
Orla
Fay
