Islander

and paddling from dinghy to shore

remembering sailors

who wrote about shores and oceans green

rolling plains

touching those sentences

looking at strata

running my fingers along lines and discontinuities

these places are marginalia rising from their own myth

creative

with monsters and seabirds and islanders

I once pulled up my anchor

and found, embedded in wave and strand and kelp,

an old lobster pot, broken, no longer a trap.

Today, I returned with poetry between my toes

First published in Fast Fibres 7 (2020)