Untitled (Bardic Submission)

By: Raem Callahan; Posted on: April 7th, 2024

Untitled

the words washed ashore in winter:
a morning storm, the sea at its highest
against Ulangi's southern rocks.

rust, breathless, apocryphal.

the shipwreck at a distance
fizzing into brine
torn by a thunder of white horses
was a tragedy not my own, yet
strewn across the sand, its lexicon.

i could have left them there
half-drowned as they were,
feeble sorrow struggling to breathe,
a jagged poem of warning
in rows of children's teeth.

seagull, pheasant, orphan, splinter.

but i hungered for words that winter.
meagre harvest as it was
i stumbled barefoot down the beach
scooping syllables and sand,
filled baskets of woven swamp grass
until the clouds broke.

i buried the most formidable phrases
in the muck behind the house
where pelicans would rest on fenceposts,
stashed the pretty ones in cupboards
to be brought out for guests, polished,
then tossed back out to sea.

but the truest i kept tucked between my sheets,
sneaking them out as needed
on rainy nights,
nights of the swamp water rising,
the thunder of horses on the roof.

sift, buoy, embrace, verisimilitude.

there have been many shipwrecks since,
including the one that brought me you.
each tragedy a beach to comb,
fingers pulled through sand by the pain of love,
by the search for survivors.

this poem is a basket sealed with pitch,
a sifting of wishes set afloat,
a cherished memory assembled in scavenged phrase,
only as seaworthy as you find it.

when my telling meets its end
in a dash of foam against rock,
when the pull of thunder
drowns meaning and intention alike,
come with bare feet and an empty basket
to the island's south shore,
feast your fingers on what remains.