Tidal Prophecy: Gezeitenwelle
We don’t know
the sea, you say, gazing
from the sky-stretching
pier. Bricks towering
over rippled sand,
rug of fouling seaweed.
Some nights I dream
of floodings,
when the tide is out
and thirst swallows
the lines between need
and longing.
Days pool together
under the nascent moon,
slip through hag stones
that flash a glimpse
of sewn-up lips, ropes
clutching bold necks.
The ocean’s swell
catapults heads
onto shoulders,
urges us to face
motion and loss,
ebb’s watery eye.
You’re right, I say,
my eyes are shells
cupping consciousness,
but I know the smell
of salt drying on hair,
foretelling waves in flight,
and the urge to swim
upstream
as I dip into hip-high water.
Solitary / Riverbed
On the day you were born
the morning haze came down
and veiled the pier like a bride,
innocent kiss on sea-worn bricks.
Your mother bled a river, eskering
over gravel and sand; muddy birth.
The Little Egret sat on tortoise rock,
her white plumage a diamond on grey.
Egrets hunt alone, unless starving,
the dark beak ready to lunge and wound.
She chased the twinning thief away,
took the whole seabed in her reign.
And in a capsule of nine months gone,
your mother held a freckled hand,
belly-inhaled the misty morning for you,
as the Egret’s wings pierced the fog,
sharp with her oath to catch a fish.
Christina Hennemann is based on the West Coast of Ireland. She’s a recipient of the Irish Arts Council’s Agility Award 2023 and she was longlisted in the National Poetry Competition. Her work appears in Poetry Ireland, Poetry Wales, Skylight 47, The Moth, York Literary Review, The Storms, Impossible Archetype, Ink Sweat & Tears, Moria, and elsewhere. www.christinahennemann.com
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