Sermon

I sat for hours, not waiting  

                           for the sea,

            but it kept coming anyway,  

               indifferently bringing

blurred names in a swollen notebook,  

              a necklace snapped  

mid-gemstone, & a fishbone glint  

              caught in the soft  

  place where my voice… 

   I hoped the sea might  

                     speak instead:  

   a tangle of vowels,  

         language dragged through kelp.  

  But no – only the break  

                     and break into foam,  

         too rhythmic to carry me-

 aning; only in the dyspnoeic  

     righting of self on shingle

                pulled from beneath,  

  can we find answers – 

               the sea only spills  

                            into itself.  

       Then salt, like grief,  

             takes what remains – 

         its slow corrosion 

                 of skins revealing 

      the tide’s blunt sermon:  

          nothing for you –

                      go – 

                              stay –