Cyphers 89

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