THE TORCH I CARRY

‘The Depths Of The Sea’ (The Lure Of The Sirens) … Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1881

THE TORCH I CARRY

I carry a torch for the ocean
In her relentless swell I am held
My light will see me to the foreshore
Where vast wave and mild ripple meld.

For though my love’s unrequited
As I walk on the shore by the sea
The sight and the sound of her motion
Bring solace and hope back to me.

For when I watch her crescendo
Its beauty and force I admire
The sigh and the roar of her surges
Are those of a celestial choir.

My heart is in thrall to her passion
Her awesome breakers I ride
White horses call me ever forward
To meet the turn of the tide.

And when she is still as a millpond
My senses respond in repose
My life consummates in devotion
All yearning brought to a close.

Yes, the lure of the Siren defeats me
I am snared by her destructive song
I have given my all to her beauty
Now only to her I belong.

Resignation – A QUATERN

My attempt at  … A QUATERN

Definition … 

A Quatern is a sixteen line French form composed of four quatrains. It is similar to the Kyrielle and the Retourne. It has a refrain that is in a different place in each quatrain. The first line of stanza one is the second line of stanza two, third line of stanza three, and fourth line of stanza four. A quatern has four stresses per line. It does not have to be iambic or follow a set rhyme scheme. 

”Ocean Waves’ … Pen & Wash – WHB . May 2017

In Resignation’

I wish the tide to swallow me whole
As though a thief had from me stole
My life, but then in guilt forgone
His gains, paused, and then moved on.

I’ve had enough of body and soul
I wish the tide to swallow me whole
For now I see, I realise,
Life is too short to compromise.

Decisions hurt but must be made,
And so, before my debts are paid
I wish the tide to swallow me whole;
I’m ready now, I’ve  lost  control.

No longer can I bear the pain,
Resigned to never feel again,
Towards the waves I edge my stroll
I wish the tide to swallow me whole.

‘The Seashore’ … Pen &  Wash – Photoshopped  with edge effect … WHB – April 2017

THE FORSAKEN MERMAID

Photo: WHB – taken in Aberporth, Ceredigion, on the West Coast of Wales, facing towards Cardigan Bay and the Irish Sea

She emanates wistfulness
melancholy, sorrow
bound to her rock
out of sight of her sea.
Andromeda’s prison
awaiting her Perseus.

She thinks of the sea,
beseeching the ocean,
to roll in and take her
to wash her away
to be lost in the waves
to swirl with the kelp
in that pellucid world
in those welcoming depths
to join the white horses
to laze in the rock pools
bask on the corals
where once were her friends

No coteries here
no sisters, no mermen,
no one to favour her –
offspring or lovers.
That whirlpool which bred her
the spray which had bathed her
sequestrated and gone now
no longer her milieu.

Is this always and ever
is this life’s stricture
retribution for what?
For loving her kingdom
her aquatic birthright?
Or for being in form
not fish, fowl nor fiend?

For living a life
half tide-borne,
half earth-child,
hermaphrodite, epicene,
ambiguous, undefined,
a shadowy being,
crippled, malformed?

Her joy now –
the sunlight,
the breeze
and the dew
the song of the seagull
the far sigh of the sea.

Only these now remind her
of when she was free.

Poem: WHB (Copyright)

The Spring Bonus

Photo by Vural Yavas on Pexels.com

You promise a delicious bonus
I wonder what joy that could bring
Perhaps, being a tell-tale romantic,
And allowing conjecture to sing, 
A cruise on a tropical ocean, 
Where mermen and mermaids will bring
Their wisdom, their unceasing love songs, 
To promise delight in the spring.

 

The Ballad of the Fatberg

Fatberg – Fatberg, Growing so fast;
Fatberg – Fatberg, Growing so fast;
Please don’t tell them where I am
They’re sure to set up a webcam.

I’ve made my way along this river
Accepting all from every giver
Now I’m stuck – a great fat ball.
Full of gunge and ten feet tall.

Mounds of wet-wipes, cooking fat.
Now you know what happens to that.
Rolled into one gigantic ball,
Big as the goddammed Albert Hall.

They say how many of us exist
In pipes and rivers in our midst.
Across our fair and pleasant land
Disposed of waste … Ain’t it grand!

When they’ve dispersed my fat and grease
all those wet wipes, every piece
Then at last I’ll meet my end
But then the next one will descend

And when dissolved, where do we go?
Why, into the sea then, don’t you know?
That great big cess pool in the ocean,
Unlikely to stir your dulled emotions. 

A FATBERG is a congealed mass in a sewer system formed by the combination of non-biodegradable solid matter, such as wet wipes, and congealed grease or cooking fat. Fatbergs became a problem in the 2010s in England, because of ageing Victorian sewers and the rise in usage of disposable cloths. Wikipedia

‘Love’s Philosophy’ – Shelley

[  # 92 of My Favourite Short Poems  ]

‘Paola & Francesca’ by John Dicksee

Love’s Philosophy  . . .  By Percy Bysshe Shelley

 

The fountains mingle with the river 

   And the rivers with the ocean, 

The winds of heaven mix for ever 

   With a sweet emotion; 

Nothing in the world is single; 

   All things by a law divine 

In one spirit meet and mingle. 

   Why not I with thine?— 

See the mountains kiss high heaven 

   And the waves clasp one another; 

No sister-flower would be forgiven 

   If it disdained its brother; 

And the sunlight clasps the earth 

   And the moonbeams kiss the sea: 

What is all this sweet work worth 

   If thou kiss not me? 

 

Summer Geese

Painting in acrylic by Canadian artist, Alma Kerr – October 2017  ©

 

I walk not with the summer geese

but I follow them

as they make their stately way

along the water’s edge

through the incoming waves

towards the seagrass

 

So beautiful

this sense that Nature and I

Are aligned

Working to the same end

Coupled in a determination

To follow our will

Into whatever the future will bring

 

Poem composed in collaboration between Alma and Roland – November 2017

SELKIE-The Seal Woman – 2

©   ‘Selkie’ … Coloured Pen – WHB – August 2017

 

SELKIE-The Seal Woman

PART THE SECOND

 

Now
As the surge of the swollen sea
Sweeps the shore
I scan the rolling waves
For a sign of her presence
A hint of her salt-scent
Her seal-self
The searing splash of her tail
As it breaks the foam’s crest

I sense the silky soft touch of her skin
I know she is there
I sense her nearness
In the clutching drift of the current

The sound of her muted cry
wafting to me with the wistful wind
Towards my rock
Her rock
Our rock
The anchor connecting our two realities
The link
Ocean-forged
Wind-weathered
Sun-scorched
Heart-touched
Communion binding us
In those few delicious moments
When our worlds merge
And we become as one

Creatures of neither sea nor land
Melded in Earth’s memory
To exist for ever
In legend

 

 

SELKIE-The Seal Woman – 1

SELKIES (said to be a diminutive form of the Scottish word for ‘seal’) are mythical creatures which feature in much Celtic literature and folklore.  These stories and the alleged sightings of these shape-shifting creatures are mostly centred on the Hebridean Islands of Scotland and the island groups of the Orkneys, the Shetlands, and further north in the Faroe Islands and around the Icelandic coastline.

Sea-going and fishing communities in these places have their stories to tell about these creatures.  Unlike mermaids, they are not half-human and half-fish.  Selkies, both male and female, are said to live as seals when in the sea, but shed their skin to become humans when on land.

 The legend takes many different forms, but it is generally thought that whenever a selkie and a human meet when both are in human form, the two will always fall in love. Such tales, however, never have a happy ending as the selkie will always at some point have to answer the call of the sea.  Even if their human partner hides the seal skin away, then, as soon as it is discovered, the Selkie will be unable to resist returning to its life as a seal, often leaving his or her children behind.

 Some interpretations of the legends maintain that, in this way, many sea-faring families, having lost their father, brother, grandfather at sea and the body never being recovered, explain the absence to the children as their loved one having re-joined the seal community (‘Gone to join the seal folk’) and will one day return.

By the sculptor Hans Pauli Olsen – ‘The Seal Woman of Mikladalur’ statue on Kalsoy (2014).  In old Faroese folklore it was believed that at certain times the seals came out of the sea, stripped their seal-skins and became real human beings, dancing on the shore. But before sunrise they had to take on their skins again to be able to return to the sea – their natural element.

SELKIE-The Seal Woman

 PART THE FIRST

She came to me from the Sea
shedding her sealskin
on that rock
A gift vouchsafed from the depths
with the alluring tang of the ocean
She captured my innocence
captivated my soul
absorbed my whole being

Communion we had to excess
our feelings of love unexplained
brought us a peace which neither had known
contentment in each other’s warmth

Then I had thought she was mine
to cherish and to love
to share time
and histories
to plan a life together

But it was not to be
her hidden sealskin discovered
she was compelled to answer
the call of the waves

It could not be for ever
our short-lived passion spent
foregone
Hope and desire
subsumed by time
by the sea’s imperative

So I lost her to the ocean
no more was she mine
only my memories remained
I had to grant
respect for her freedom
her heritage
seek solace in memory
and bury my hopes
in the swell of the sea

 PART The Second – to be published tomorrow . . .

The Torch I Carry

‘The Depths Of The Sea’ (The Lure Of The Sirens’) … Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1881)

I carry a torch for the ocean,
In her relentless swell I am held;
My light will see me to the foreshore
Where vast wave and mild ripple meld.

For though my love’s unrequited,
As I walk on the shore by the sea,
The sight and the sound of her motion
Bring solace and hope back to me.

For when I watch her crescendo
Its beauty and force I admire;
The sigh and the roar of her surges
Are those of a celestial choir.

My heart is in thrall to her passion,
Her awesome breakers I ride;
White horses call me ever forward
To meet the turn of the tide.

And when she is still as a millpond
My senses respond in repose;
My life consummates in devotion,
All yearning brought to a close.

Yes, the lure of the Siren defeats me;
I am snared by her destructive song.
I have given my all to her beauty;
Now only to her I belong.