Susan Taylor
Selkie
Our hearts are fishers both
but yours is happy to bob up high
on the silver water.
Your net works the tides for you.
I am one to work the deep down
with my bright body,
feel the impulse of fish
through my echoey fur.
You have been kind
in meeting my doleful eyes.
We have cared for each other
and the children pups.
The days have passed glittering
and there has been plenty.
But where we live together
there is dry seaweed hung,
fossil shells in the walls,
dying fish on the floor.
As you came in from fishing
the thousandth dawn,
I had to watch again
the herring gulp for water
and feel my own throat dry.
I am in need of deep caves
where my sisters make music
for all that flourish in the sea.
They sing of water drained from flesh,
the epic struggle of whales,
dolphins and our siblings skewered
because we need share a salt harvest.
Though you are human,
I will not lay their blood at your door.
I leave you the children pups
we have raised so well.
They will square you with the ocean,
then teach you, in time, our songs.
The cold waves you wade through
have a way of telling you,
you couldn’t keep me
from my skin for ever.
Page(s) 106
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