Our Love For The Sea

Written for April’s Visual Verse Anthology image by Sarah-Jane Crowson

Let us parse and analyse 
our love for the sea:

  -incessant trawling
  
  -fish skeleton necklaces  
dressing ourselves as gods
skin indicative of bath salts
  
  -the death 
counted in wave-beats 
but we hear only roaring

and, after all
we close our eyes
  -to the jellyfish fairies
ripping stars like wishes into the waves

  -to the mother-of-pearl
tears sewn into nets
heartbroken tomb stones 
and the summoning of light

  -the squid’s inky law suit
(in the reefs
 those little babies
 killed by misquotation)

if we read the fine print

love is not a carousel
eternal clanking music
or icecream drips on pavement

love is that blue eye 
world-about
waiting to be met