Saturday: Seawatch

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Voyages With My Daughter

Voyage 1

The best sailors, Aurelia-Noa’s father
says as he unties a reluctant nappy,
are those whose days sway to the same rhythm
their nights undulate and those who startles
in sleep seeing lighthouses flashing out
a rocky cladach and those who may haven’t
seen any sea.
The best sailors, her father sports a watery eye,
are always ready with a sadness for the places
they will depart in the time to come. Land,
says Aurelia-Noa’s father, exists to make
the body of water interesting. Nighttime.
A noise makes them look at the window pane.
A seagull, blind, whooshes by, the streets
and lanes harbour the silhouettes. One
school of lights swim beside another’s shoal.
Everything smells brine. Puma, cooes Aurelia-Noa.
Her father nods, closes his eyes.

Voyage 2

One night of no sleep
Aurelia-Noa and her Puma
go on a voyage to save
one Dream whale
caught in between
two wolf shaped icebergs
melting and shapeshifting.

On their course they meet
a mute octopus
who writes whatever it wants
to say and it says, “…”.
They meet a swimming penguin.
Penguin tells them about the star
that follows her
from the northeast point of
northern hemisphere
and about the aurora borealis.

“Sing the song again.”, says
Aurelia-Noa when penguin finishes.
It hums, “kachingachingachingess.”
And Aurelia-Noa falls asleep
in her Puma’s arms.

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Voyage 3

Little Aurelia-Noa will show you her cot
where hides a spider whose name is Loki
who sings in a low key and sings about meeting
his grandmother who lives in the sea and who is
the mute octopus they met in another tall tale –
the time they went to recover from blue
into the deepest part of the barrier reef,
oh what an adventure.
Never ever Aurelia-Noa will spill where
the u-boat carrying all the stolen arts is buried,
but it is somewhere in her crib.

Voyage 4

A hermit crab crawls
with its coke can home.

They witnessed a whale
in those wave,

then they also said
mermaids mislead Columbus.

I play hermit crab with my daughter,
say, “I am the crab. Your childhood
is my home for this tide.

-Kushal Poddar

Beyond the breakers

what can I see?

I see a little fishing boat
almost too distant for me.

I see enormous wind machines,
in rows and rows white and clean.

I see seabirds dive and fall,
hear the their of their lonely call.

Beyond the breakers
what do you see?

-Paul Brookes