Night’s gloved hand roused me, touching my feverish brow
And filled me with a thousand waking longings –
And as if led by the great hand of sleep,
I wandered with my broken thoughts
As if barefoot, pulled by the tide –
To stand at the water’s edge
Like some painted, strange figurehead,
Pale in the sea’s shadows,
My face against the silence,
‘Tis I and the rain here together,
Entwined in this moment.
A boat moored nearby turned over in its sleep,
And the moon’s sweet face
Peered from the windows of the fishermen’s cottages.
The silence was filled with my life,
As I stood there,
And felt the longing of the waiting pages, the poised pen,
The desk all in darkness.
All these things that had gone into my hand –
The crying of the gulls and the sea’s restless, grey soul,
Upon these shores, I strew words in return,
Sowed them like seeds
To take quiet root and burgeon upon your sands –
Or be collected like shells
By the local children at dawn.
© Elizabeth Jane Timms 2019
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Title Image credit: Keven Law from Los Angeles, USA [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)]
