A SEA POEM

“The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea.” - Isak Dinesen

A poem tonight which is transcribed from an old journal I used to write in, before blogs and the internet! Funny how the keyboard and screen has now all but replaced paper and pen… I must admit though that pens, pencils, crayons, markers, paper of all sorts are never far away from reach on all of my desks (including at work!).

Afterimage

Seashell, sun-blond with crimson sound
Tears lonely air apart, rips silence;
And on a sea-blue negative
Records the gift of thirsty air.

The rosy cockle speeds through pink light years
To impale itself through black irises
Engraving an everlasting memory,
On marble slabs of my mind.

Sea murmurs, as if a lullaby singing,
In cool palaces of unstepped on ocean depths,
To put to sleep infant tritons
While Amphitrite smiles enigmatically.

The sea, pearl-embroidered, calls to me
Its sweet voice echoing in my empty heart
While my salt-water blood flows slowly
In veins of dolphin body.

Salt, sweetness, coolness, fire of flesh
Are kneaded with sun, and sea and sounds of waves,
With green darknesses in depths of eyes
Illumined by a flash of love, but for a moment.

Now drops of salty sea roll down my cheeks
To water my infertile desert.
The memory is with me, nonetheless
Even if the sea has long dried up.

I open up the locked chest of my mind
And there, I find your afterimage
Containing all of you in it,
Just as the seashell carries within it all of the sea.

In clenched fist I hold tight the conch,
A fragment of sun shines in my gaze,
My blood is salty and sea-green
My thoughts mirroring the has-been,
On my retina your blue-green afterimage
Burnt indelibly.


Jacqui BB hosts Poetry Wednesday, so visit her site for more poems!