How easily she left the house;

The windows glow amber on the cliff top:

On the beach she palm-cradles pebbles;
[not the imagined :chink: but something altogether more]
tumbling fistfuls watch and wait.

She is pieced together: some other limbs
hinged from some other spinestack,
a rickety puppet performing to fog

whose paleness blows in across the salt marsh;
a brackish and cloaking relief, softly
cloaking her powdering bones, her blunted mind.

Seaweeds wrap skirts round her hips,
round her silver-lined belly,
tightly binding her heavy hands.

The oystercatcher sieves memories from salty shallows.
An SOS lined neatly in stones
and a sea so flat and wide as to still her blood.

---

 

Reviews

[Donald Meikle]

First line's a grabber The rest holds attention like palm cradled pebbles spilling life

[TL Boehm]

a sea so flat as to still her blood. Where have all the real writers, like you gone? so much to savor in this piece. powdering bones. Palm cradles pebbles. Yes, this is writing. I so miss you.

[Gandré]

and you are back here, too! I am just a reader, I like to come back here. // your Q: no, I won't do anything with that post, it is a reminder nothing more :)
********
subtle romance and revolt.. u again have shown your poetic talent :) glad to read you.. such beautiful poems shouldn't be posted for free.. soon the copycats will take what they can carry... so sad this behavior.

[Raef C. Boylan]

I've missed your hyphenated compounds - "palm-cradles" and the like.
Also really like the way you make the noise "chink" distinct within the line using those colons to signal its arrival. Overall great imagery and a calm, confident poetic voice.

Glad to have you back Ebby :)

[Ed Hart]

i love it when you write in one direction, and tell a story that goes the other...or how you walk across sixteen lines, and your feet never touch the ground...yes, please come by and be merciless with your tender self

[Cathy Wattam]

This poem grabbed my attention. Great imagery used and good storytelling. Well done.

[patricia]

quite mystical, eerie. great imagery. nice tone. enjoyed.