Remembering the Sea

My youth was hot dunes, wind dunes, dunes
Snow-scalped, frost-racked and bitter.
Their paths called like a mother –
Sea mother, shell, beach, tide-raked.
A coastal sphere cut a compass point short;
West was sea; but shortened to:
Wide sky vaulting for God and
Distant sea lanes – ship-ploughed.

West disappeared, yes, erased
Like a plane once – engine firing,
Smoke inking its passage to
Sea Crash, sea grave – vanished.
I saw it make its last, yawning dip
To tear its hull in slow, tanker sea.
The numb water washed it painless,
Swept the scar, blanked it, waved it.

My sea had other bodies, and gave them
Ashore, dropped them, the jilted,
Salt-scabbed.  A seal once - crackling hide,
Putrid within, yielding to the sickly jab
Of driftwood and boyish gore – split
Brown muck into the powdery sand.
But sea scrubbed clean all filth.
We threw our sticks to mother.

On fog-bound nights, the bell buoy
Tolled its call over the flats and met
My ears dulled on sleep, but whispered still
Of my fear of deeps: of drowned sailors washing
Over dark banks, their lonely pockets pouring coins,
And pipes shined from hands’ use, to the sandy bed -
Haunt of flatfish and skate - shifting bed, duning bed.
My dreams crept sunken narrows: paths deep-lit.

-John Lund