Day Seven – What marine life does for us.

-photo by Paul Brookes

from Five Ways to a Secret

V. Sea

The sea comes in on the breath of the wind,
touching my face, finding my tears.
After oceans of grief, bitterness, years
of drought, of course it is the sea that finds
the well-spring of my words and fills it with water.
Your voice is the wind, cool on my skin.
I bite my lip, I drink you in,
tasting of blood: copper and salt.

You are all through everything, sweet in my mouth,
deep in my veins the tide flowing,
drowning in the memory of another life.
I fill my lungs with the sea and shout.
Beating with the pulse of the moon-wrenched ocean,
my heart is as wide as the sky.

©YMarjot2021

Ultramarine

The other day lobsters swam
inside through the kaput panes.

Our daughter is born with the gills.
We wear something forged and feigned.

For one jiffy fear had a mouse-run
in our minds’ maze, but then they circled past.

Two songs we glug – Yellow Submarine
and Imagine – never leave from our dreams.

Tonight I and my daughter sit
atop one broken mast. Stars, some dead

but still twinkling, pronounce Black aloud,
with thick accents, and all the shades we know

shed their hues. Perhaps meanings too,
have no meaning anymore. We live our deaths

fine and our this marine life. We whisper, we
close our eyes. Wishes decree a star’s fall.

-Kushal Poddar

The Marine Sonnets:

Therapy

Listen, soft crash of my waves alter your
brain patterns, feel my sand exfoliate,
your skin as my unevenness makes floor
walk harder, works your calves and thighs. A state

of meditation lulls, slows your heart beat,
deepens your breath. My blue sky and sun shoot
up your body feel good drugs, my heat
and negative ions ensure reboot.

I massage the vagus nerve in your neck,
enough for all this to happen. Watch fish
in rockpools provide aquariums check
your stress, rejuvenate a hug and kiss.

I’m health resort, recommunion,
refresher, renewer, good reunion.

-Paul Brookes

Bios And Links

-Yvonne Marjot

is a lost kiwi, now living on a Scottish island. She has been making up stories and poems for as long as she can remember. Her first volume of poetry, The Knitted Curiosity Cabinet, won the Brit Writers Award for poetry in 2012. She loves her job, running a small public library, and has published four novels and a book of short stories. Twitter handle: @alayanabeth