The Lunacy

At the end of the beach where the sand meets the sky,
There’s a little, black lady perched on the risen dune.
She sits below the gulls and nods when they cry
And they call her the reader, the liar, the loon;
The speaker of stories, of fibs, of fictions, false tales,
From the ocean and the beach and the wimpling wave.
But nobody visits. So she watches white, blooming sails,
Alone on her dune, alone all nights and her days.

Except for the summer when the children arrive,
And they run down the shore to the woman who waits,
Asking about sea-captains, about boys drowned alive
But saved by the mermaids before it’s too late.
They ask about turtles, the frolicking fish.
They ask about pirates and the saluting albatross;
But no matter what they ask, no matter their wish,
She tells only one story, of a love that she lost.

She says falling in love involves telling a tale,
To ourselves, to our hearts, about falling in love.
The children sit quiet and the gulls forget to wail,
As the woman falls silent, eyes fixed up above.
She says it’s a paradox, like the sea or the storm,
That we need the story as much as desire,
It’s innate, within us from the day that we’re born,
It fills up our soul with insatiable fire.

Her simple story: a tale laid out below blue-lipped hills,
On this wee island that’s so caught in the middle
Of our collected bobbing, boats in the swirland the swill
And the sea-salt wind, the clouds and the tidal riddle.
Her lover was drowned off a grey scrag rock,
His breath was snatched by the cold, cruel deep
And his body washed up beneath the rickety dock
That she’ll watch until enticed into her own long sleep.

She then turns to the children, with the words they all know,
And she says in a voice that lets all her love show:
“I sometimes dream that I hear his voice call,
And I go to the water and I listen, listen for the call:
The call doesn’t come, but I walk back alone the beach
And just for a second, I’ve thought he’s still within reach
Saying: I’m back my love, thanks for waiting.”


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