lifelines

 

she sits

she knits

the needles click

as strand by strand

in cracked crabbed hands

each stitch

might haul them

back to land

 

her days, her nights are one, the same -

a gift of darkness borne by grief

to wounds already salted well.

lips taste each quarter

of the wind; she hears the tides

advance, retreat -

as if in echoes from

some  ancient stranded shell.

she feels the swell of mercury -

a spell, for whalestorms

breaching to the west.

her heart has learned

the transit of the moon,

his wax, his wane,

his pull,

his rest.

 

he was a Padstow boy, born with the caul -

immortal, priceless, fashioned for the sea -

she the fishgirl in her sequin scales

waiting through each squall, each calm

 - stab and slit,

flick and twist,

and fling the guts

out to the gulls -

and Sunday Chapel

singing him from harm

when tempest claws

made ribbons of the sails.

 

the tide came empty-handed, slack

and lifeless, limping in, where wives and girls

watched clocks and waited

for fear their eyes should ever meet

where hope and time evaporated

and whispers sold for tears

to the ends of every

single

ringing

street.

 

 

she stood. alone for forty nights they said -

never slept or dropped her stare -

beneath the Lizard’s beam and seven sisters

huddled overhead, when at the last

it was the sea who brought the news

- a gansey, sodden with a name

an almost-pair of boots

tangled rope

snapped spars

a dream, drowned

in eyes refusing to believe

in the horizon’s

empty truth.

 

for Brixham boys she knits.

Lamorna lads and Mevagissey men.

she hears their songs and feels

the beating of their hearts

between the blues

beyond the Longships

and the Wolf

into the starry

black

darkness.

 

 

she sits.

she knits.

the needles click.

row after row

hand over hand

she hauls her skeins

like ragged net

and stitch by stitch

by inch by inch

she knits them

dreams them

to the land.