—from Spirit of Wild
Isle of Lewis, Scotland
I have been dreaming seals
in an ice-edged dawn,
the blue of a nightingale’s flight
scattering into pixie dust.
Wavelets lapping a shingled shore
urge me toward the sea,
sable eyes peeking above the water’s rim.
What do they see from the other side,
heads nipping in silence
through half-water, half-sky?
The ocean embraces them, bodies spiraling,
gliding, curling in a kind of grace.
Whatever follows, whatever their fears
is not here, in this moment, in this place.
Their whiskers, my hair salt-soaked,
frost riming my clothes, I breathe the deep.
Even in sleep I am moon-witched
by the thrusting, tugging tides:
the rumble of the foaming, spraying surf,
curving under and above, giving birth
to whirlpools and rhythms of bliss
where seals frolic in tempests
and sing in my dreams.
