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).