Seal Girl

77 0 0
                                    

The quiet slip of tide
scouring footprints from ashy sand.
The shush of salt to skin
and the flesh tightens with cold.

I'm nursing a chilled hunger
for gray waters and ice capped rock.

I remember her photograph;
Shawl drawn over dark hair, bare feet, buttoned up to the neck;
a girl who left home alone to live
only to die young on strange soil.

I wonder if she clung to these waters,
Because she longed for her own shores.
still searching for her seal skin.

She hoped for home.
She gave me my name
and I am still here
perhaps craving those same unseen swells.

DNA strung like harp strings in my bones, 
the salt burn of genetic memory.


Galatea: Collected PoemsWhere stories live. Discover now