I never saw the sea

in the seaside town I lived in -

just green slobber, white gunk piling

in the corner of its mouth. No skin touched

but goose skin - pinched,

boys doing belly flops on hard pebbles,

gurgling wrack-weed and salt and vinegar.

Gulls squawked at fat baby toes.

Not like that other coast,

one I saw for a first time - hot dusty port

peeling dry nets, the worn blue of them

swum down to paint shells.

Now guarded by lines of olive fishermen

those same rains that once filled rock basins

where gods sat drowning, inventing

gills to make breath underwater.

But I saw a man slip there,

oh the hubris of jumping. He was married

to the fish bride’s fatty veil,

strangled by squid tails, molluscs sucked

to his thighs new ocean floor.

Knowing better, no one moved. I ran

back to the pavement, back to the solid place

between fin and sky.