Old Salt

The ship to the ocean as the man to his wife ' the storm that comes is what brings them sailing home to their private harbours, their secluded bays. The fish in the ocean and the fish in the nets ' to be free or to be useful. The land, the ancient stoic land, a barren ground of cemeteries, ' far better the sea for me, the sea my grave and mothering bed.

I will govern the stars tonight, demand of them abeyance and confuse them in their constellations so no ship may navigate and the licking waves will be cut by my prow alone. I will call forth the north's thick cloud to coat the sky with tumult and season the air with storm taste and unruly wind. Mine is this homey sea and all the stretching horizon ' to sail out unhindered, compass sheathed and rudder fixed. I am the cardinal points, this north and south, the rise and set, the time for returning is over; the ocean will succumb tonight to me.

I'm old amongst the other men, my thoughts more stayed and blinkered. What I know is salt and air, gone's what's called ideas; I've no use for such trinkets any more. They are mere possessions, baubles gathered in foreign ports to show a life's been lived. Their value lingers as long as pride remains, with vanity comes the hollow word, all that's abstracted away from the deep.

The truth is the sea and its ready cast of colour. Its depth and breadth the only lessons of life, its lapping midnight sound, in a dead calm summer, the summation of perceptible beauty. Merman and giant sharks, long as three proud trawlers, the myths and legends of this earth, this orb adorned by waters.

The salt is in my skin, turned me white and dried me up. I'm a dry beard of kelp caught on a spike in the harbour wall ' I must return to the deep where I can moisten up again. I dream of that final sinking, amongst the goggle-eyed princely fishes.

' And the maiden of my dreams, who had the waves on her breath, is a bottled matchstick galleon, a shelved antique keepsake. I'm a lovelost sailor salty as the stinging wind, lonely as the cormorant. The ocean is the woman, and the woman's in the ocean.

On thirty ships I've sailed, watched three a'them sink and four more run ashore. I've taken monkeys from the branches of floating hurricaned palms, seen a huge wave the shape of a bull rise high as a mountain; I've taken in the lamplight of the ocean, seen the northern summer that knows no night; I've cast out messages in bottles and found one twelve years later the other side of the world, made coconut drums to beat music in the bow.

I'm old and tired, rusted up in parts. The grassy muddy earth frightens me to sleep with its huge stupid animals and fixed coarse shape ' I'm a giant fish, dolphin or whale, coming to the end of the adventure, walking to the end of the pier. The oceans an hour off from night and there's a swirling rip around ' my nose the prow and feet the rudder, naked arms the sails. I've eyes as watery as any fish and I know I'm dried to the core.

Farewell dear friends, I leave you now, shook to bones in your stinking holes with holy stones above you ' the ocean'll come, for all'a you too, ' eventually it'll swallow you up. Goodbye sweet sun and swirling stars, and moon, huge moon, I bid you special care ' you're my lover light, my friendly face in foreign night.

Sink me quick, eat my toes, weeds come poke my eyes. I'm the ocean now, the ocean a woman, I've found my freezing love.