My father built his home with its face to the sea,
on the Brough of Birsay—gale-battered, rocky shore.
My father—a fisherman haunting Norse ruins, silent
and solitary. And tarnishing my memory’s silver
tint of him, my mother claims he was a recluse slip
of a Scot. A man trapped inside his sheepish skin.
One autumn night, my mother says, she left her skin
on the beach (having emerged a seal from the mystic sea)
to let her human legs dance and feel the wet sand slip
between her fingers and toes. This, she says, is the shore
of her people. And I imagine her naked under the silver
moon, imagine my father falling in love, awed and silent.
I wonder if my mother knew of the somber and silent
spy who’d wait seven years before touching her seal skin,
and she smiles. My hands glide over her cold, silver
pelt. I abhor it—this nature of my mother, the selfish sea.
She says she’d rather have drowned than leave the shore
for grass, but my timid-sweet father offered to let her slip
back into her fur. The sea’s call, she says, seemed to slip
from her heart. An addictive music filled the once silent
valves, and she spent a year with my father on the shore,
becoming quite familiar, she says, in her human skin.
But not a month after my birth, she returned to the sea.
So for seven years, my lonely father raised me on silver
tales of my mother, calling her the moon’s silver
kisses on the crinkling brow of waves and the slip
of blue light just before dawn. When the glacial sea
gave her back, I told her this; I called her silent,
pirouetting luminescence. I relished both her skins.
When she left, again, I wanted to be foam on her shore.
And here she is: my mother walking on the shore,
holding my brother’s hand (and he points to silver
stars; they remind him of her) as I hold her seal skin
and think that he’ll never know a mother. She’ll slip
away in a year, leaving another bairn and a silent
chair, and my brother pining for her return from sea.
My father won’t steal her skin and keep her from the sea,
so we cling to mother’s silver laugh, our own—silent,
afraid of watching her slip away, reluctant on her shore.
Author notes
selkie--a mythical creature that looks like a seal in water but assumes human form on land. (Dictionary.com) more info: Selkie (Wikipedia)
Brough of Birsay--is a small (21 hectare) uninhabited tidal island off the north west coast of The Mainland of Orkney, Scotland, in the parish of Birsay. (Wikipedia)
A contest entry
- Oh No! Oh YES!!! SESTINA CONTEST by SteveS.
3500 points, ended September 17, 11 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest - Sestina Contest! by KnightOfTheRose.
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Comments
1 - 9 of 9
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I enjoyed this, I'm always intrigued by Selkie lore. Thank you... seems like you did a great job with this somewhat impossible form!
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This is lovely! I first knew the legend from the Sule Skerry song, and you've retold it beautifully, with an intimacy that makes it real. Great use of the form, in an enchanting poem.
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Very nice sestina. I love the story you told here and the lines weave together nicely. Thank you for this entry.
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oh wow this is incredible! I absolutely adore legends of the Selkies and this is a beautifully spun tale. Best of luck in the competition!
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Wow! Really well done. So many sestinas are frustratingly repetitive, but this one incorporates the necessarily repeated words seamlessly into the narrative and tells a story from beginning to end.
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Oh, what a fascinating tale, told so well in this form! Love the fluidity within the lines and lovely use of the repeating words. I really enjoyed this.
A~
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You are a master at creating pictures from words. Your story within the sestina form is fluid and fascinating. I love this piece.
Regards,
Camille Morin
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Oh wow. Wow. That was incredible. You have done an amazing job with the sestina. Your word usage to convey the imagery was...unbelievable. I adore this. It was sad, but so magnificently beautiful.
Write on.
~*~SP~*~
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A sad fantasy and yet told in such a consistent voice as to feel and seem real.
excellent!
and the form used to perfection, the repetition adding to and enhancing the imagery and story.
A pure joy to read
ken
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