The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Sea HorseWords by Lynn White Image by Christine Stoddard QuailBellMagazine.com *Editor's Note: This poem was first published in Visual Verse, June 2017. It was on the first day of our seaside holiday that I found him washed up, stranded, spat out by the sea and swimming alone in the rock pool. I had never seen a sea horse before,
only pictures in a book. I used my shoe to fish him out and ran back quickly, one shoe on and one shoe off, before the water leaked out. I put him in the sink and watched him swim. He didn’t seem quite right. Or maybe it was the pictures that were wrong, or my memory. He couldn’t stay in the sink. My mother made that quite clear. So I found him a jar in the cobwebby shed and put him in that. I fed him on bits of bread, minced meat and mashed banana. He spat them all out angrily. I thought he would die from lack of food and my mother said he couldn’t come home with us. So I took him back to the waters edge and released him, gave him back to the sea. The next day I found him lying on the pebbles. The sea had rejected him, spat him out, just as he had spat out my food offerings. I carried him back, in my shoe again and put him back in the jar. I’m older now and when I look at him, I’m wise enough to know that he is no seahorse, but not wise enough to know his name. Only that the sea rejected him, spat him out, as he had rejected me. CommentsComments are closed.
|