Poem 439

Written when I was nineteen and rather beautiful I think … a selkie is a seal woman of Celtic legend who marries a land man but will always be drawn back to her natural element … obviously that’s a metaphor common to all relationships in which there’s a pull in one partner to their original environment or to some kind of spiritual urge … actually now I think of it Joni Mitchell’s song Urge For Going (written when she wasn’t much more than twenty) deals with this same feeling even though I wasn’t aware of her song when I wrote this … without the selkie reference you might read this as ending in death (and I suppose that is one possibility) but for me it’s loss of another kind …

( Good rhythm and rhyming, I particularly like the fifth line of each stanza standing on its own but having the same rhyme throughout … not sure if this is an established rhyme scheme or one I invented … and the change in meaning of the repeated final line … )

The Selkie’s Husband

Restless this evening
she rubs the cat against the grain
of its long lithe body
as it arches under the strain
of her pale and nervous hands

she clutched awake last night
in a sweat with a cry of fear
wouldn't answer to me
just lay in the dark with a stare
until her dreams fell away to sand

she sleepwalks through the day
in a garden of grass and flowers
summer sweeps the fields
where she sits and dreams for hours
and hours whenever she can

but always she looks to the east
where the sun explodes from the sea
and whenever she looks she sighs
I know where she wants to be
though still by me she stands

I toss in sleep tonight
and see her far from me
walking a wind ridden beach
beside a sullen sea
with not a sign of land

turning uneasily
I reach but touch a space
and wake glimpsing currents
tangle hair about her face

until my dreams fall away to sand