While the sea has been busy elsewhere, by Rhona Stephens

I have found salty Medusa locks laid to dry.
I have found a colony of sea-tempered stones,
a mermaid’s purse and a cuttlefish bone.

I have found jellyfish big as size twelve boots,
battle-weary barnacles, keyhole limpets
and stillborn crabs, pale as blackthorn bloom.

I have found orange-clubbed sea slugs
in jewel-box pools where silken fish seek
and hide among strawberry anemones.

Once, I found a gannet, surprised as Icarus by its fall,
left wing outstretched, wide-iceberg-eyed as a morning sun,
pearl-breasted and pure in its astonishment.

I have found mirror-images of mackerel skies,
and runnels through rocks to sand-sweetened shallows
and on to an underworld I can see only in dreams.

While the sea has been busy elsewhere,
I have found fallen stars
and shells to sing me through winter.

*

Rhona Stephens grew up in Northern Ireland and now lives in Scotland. She loves words and music, living in the country and visiting the coast, especially the north coast of Ireland. You can find her poems for children in Tyger Tyger, The Toy, Parakeet, The Dirigible Balloon, PaperBound, Little Thoughts Press and The Charles Causley Trust.