The Witch’s Daughter

South Utsire, southerly or southwesterly 4 to 6,

becoming variable, occasional rain, fog patches.

You can't drown him, mother said,

he was born under the Dog Star, rising,

his caul wrapped tight around his head. 

Still, I whistled my bad fortune 

from the shore; for somewhere 

I am a wreck, a dark harbour for serpents,

swilled and sand-blown, barnacled, but 

with the bones of a memory of land,

of the sure-footed.

Lundy, Fastnet, Northeast 3 to 5, moderate in the southwest, 

but elsewhere smooth or slight. Fair. Good.

I went to sea in a cockleshell,

it being a Wednesday, my broom for an oar,

I had a mind to find him, with tricks

of glittering scales, the ocean, a thousand

cormorants deep. A selkie, soft-slipped, shiny 

as a black pearl, beneath an ithe, returned

to the strangeness -- the abyssal of fangtooth 

and wolffish, beneath a squall, its sea spell and 

the flickering green lanterns below.

Hebrides, Bailey, Fair Isle, Faeroes, southwest 5 to 7,

becoming cyclonic later, rain or showers.

Kelp-haired, fists of brine, I sought him,

over the shapes of monsters, the shadows

of half-dreams, across leagues of ogin,

a great swell, the dangers of unbroken eggshell,

me, a witch's daughter, and him, with his knots

that he knew from palomar to bimini twist;

we knew each other well once, I think, but

this how we sail now, fitful and alone,

adrift upon the mysteries of sleep.

Image is from here: https://artvee.com/dl/the-witchs-daughter/