Borderling (Jan. 18, 2005)

Borderling I am,
of sea and shore
composed, a sand
which slips through
dark blue veins
from every bed
I’ve loved. Soul-
doors are packed
but hard where
waves have smashed
and roared, a road
worn smooth by
the feet of selkies
who have wandered in
and we who have walked
those crashing miles
searching for your
smile again. Here
is where worlds
mist and wash
to greet in songs
as old those strange
fish who first crawled
beyond the sea.
That land still
feels the ache of gills
no longer fanning blue,
sea angels and their
swift dragon left
behind to myths
forever drowned.
Here is where love
plunged me deep
into a sweet tide’s
psaltery, baptising
me in crash and swoon,
forever haunting every
wave with strange
ebbed quietus which
erased your smile at last.
Betrothed and sworn
I am to that infernal
wash that stained
my life half-blue,
bleached and burnt
by its shore-vowelings,
my feet shod in that
homeless wave
which voyages on
to every isle you
once slept in,
bedding your
resonance, entranced
with the fading
perfume that is
mixed in every tide.
This song grows
smooth as sea-glass
with day’s wave,
shoring the pale
throat which ferries
blue between
divinities, dominions
of soul at least --
heart wild as the
pagan sea, the mind
building its chapel
on those blue bones,
writing down the
waves. Here is my
country of birth,
my native tongue
of foam and breeze:
an oh-so-narrow isthmus
of sand-packed page
between eternal marges
of brine and fire,
of spume and torpor.
It’s a death of sorts
to remain here
where you will not
return, long after all
wrack of actual beaches
have long washed away:
Yet each walk before
first light refrains
the voice way down
which rose so many
lives ago. Borderling
of blue I am,
psalmist of that tide
on which all lovers
dreamers &
changelings on
blue angels ride.