Selkies

Selkie Blues by Sgorbissa

Sorry for the silence!

I have been roaming, just back from an Autumn Road Trip of London and Ireland. My good friend Jo is off to Rwanda, and my friends Ruairí and Martine are off to Laos. Feeling a little abandoned, and appear to have returned home to the same grotty cold I had when I left!

Felt inspired during my travels to play about with poetry. First poems in over a year. A form of writing much loved, long neglected. 

You can find my Poems from the Road on my website. Here's one inspired by seals.

Selkies

Rush of wild air, tainted with mermaids' hair
Dragging you down to a thick salty world
Of watery seaweed webs
Catching your gut with its chill punch
Claiming your mind for its own

Sharp clams strike blood against the rock
Tearing your toes as further you go
Walking towards your washy tomb

From birth to the given day
You've never turned away

Come to me, big brown eyes
Speckled skin like the flying thrush
Spattered on silver-grey silk
As you rush between the waves
Laughing at the clumsy clods of earth
That walk the land
That stand and point and picture you
With battery boxes and buttons

One moment there, the next gone
Vanishing with the tidal song

Sing it to me now
Let me hear as you now hear
Dive me deep beneath the surf
Till sky and sea merge
And I cannot tell my up from down

Until I drown

Sea water, saltwater, sacred water
I'll breathe the tears I cry
For one chance to follow you
For one chance to float beneath the summer moon
To eat my meals off soft belly
Chewed between flippered fingers
Laughing like the Selkie

© Marion Grace Woolley