Poem Of The Month: December 2013

I WAS JEALOUS OF THE SEA

I

I remember the sea,

All day long it was with me.

Hitching the coast road,

Around the rim of the bay.

At one end, a distant reach of sand

A wide yellow dinghy with no outboard,

Centred and small, so very small,

And very far away.

The deep flat green as tinted glass

Water, Water, Water,

The tiny crest of white at the bow,

As a man, bright in yellow sou’wester

Clove the surface of the ocean.

I can still see the paddles, wet, flashing, red,

The rubber craft seeming still,

And rooted to the surface of the water.

It’s more than half my lifetime ago

I was travelling with some Germans

In a barrel top, I had hitched a ride in

From the only fork in the long, long road

Fifteen miles away at Milltown.

I was on a pilgrimage —

To find a berth in a perfect commune,

I had heard was in the area, somewhere?

I arrived, eventually, at the silent village,

We would later live in —

The greater part of two decades.

II

All about me there was water, gusts and spatters,

Creating voices, squalls that rose and fell,

Above me in the furze, below me in the rocks.

The permanent inquisitive fingers of the drizzle

Finding ways, inexorable, slow, invasive,

Into every seam to rest like slippery glue

Against an unyielding surface, of skin, cold, blue.

Being defenceless, against the weather, is what I mostly remember.

In wet shoes.

III

There were few cars in towns

Even less in the country, carts and horses

Banded wheels, tractors

And water. Always water, fresh rain water

Sea water carried by the wind

Up the face of cliffs

Along with yelps of sheepdogs herding

Shepherds, whistles and commands

Echoing from distant green mountains

Twenty miles away — across the long narrow channel

Of light refracting, always shifting sea.

I would get to know it more closely later

All its changes, patchwork colours, its mystery

So closely I would cease to see it

Familiarity turns eternal into normal —

Until it became in our long silent time

Of deepest losses, my enemy, your friend,

Something to be fought with, mastered, subdued,

Or be defeated by, on my part, at least, it was.

You however with a nature I was somehow lacking

Embraced it as an entity of nurture,

I was jealous, of you, of it, watching as it took you

Immersing you, bathing you, half naked in it.

Your reciprocation? — almost cuddling with it.

As I knew you had, other more responsive lovers,

As if achieving, an indivisible intimate succour, between you,

A palliative for badly damaged spirits — and always bleeding hearts.

I, I now suspect, believing far too many lies

Old wives tales, native superstitions, mythologies

Fantasies of manhood, other such delusions,

Carried on — In the only manner left to me —

Bringing alienation to deepest, bitterest, conclusion.

I am near the sea now, but rarely view or feel it

The way I used to when you left each year,

And I would be sitting in the quiet of the day,

Watching the river pass outside our house.

Carrying, upon its surface, our shades

Buoying them, ferrying, returning them,

To the river’s mouth half a mile away.

Copyright © Martin A. Egan 2013

All rights reserved

The author has asserted her/his right under Section 77

of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988

to be identified as the author of this work.

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