Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Hilda Morley: "Sea-Map"



                                           




















Taste of salt on my fingers,
                                                   that’s how
I like it:
                the line of sea rising
above the dark-green pine,
                                                  the sea meeting
the horizon,
                        so always the eyes are lifted higher,
                        the pulse buoyed upward
with them
                    So it
should be for us all—
                                         to belong to
whatever moves us outward into
the wideness, for journeying,
                                                      tales of
distant places,
                              treasures piled
                              to fill our smiling,
                                                                for us to know of
along the travelled coastline,
                                                      the mountains
we can climb to,
                                each port,
                                                      each harbor
another window to wash our faces in,
                                                                                pull us
forward
                  & made for us,     made for
all of us,
                    as the birds know, who
fly the continents,     the oceans
for their secret reasons,
                                             a map of the earth
written inside their bodies,
                                                   marked
under their breastbones:   
                                               a continuance
of the now most fragile,         
                                                 always travelled
patiently enduring world




"Sea-Map" by Hilda Morley, from Cloudless at First. © Moyer Bell, 1995.

Art credit: "Where the sea and sky meet," photograph by Saira (originally color).



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