White Wedding

Maybe you've become the sea.

Serpents

Beach

Stretching on in the faintly lit miles

Of green sea edges.

Where the serpents taunt those,

Brave enough to travel to the water's

Broken

Shattered

Edges,

Like the glass I have dropped

And which shattered,

And the liquid,

It spilled in some fluid pattern,

And so I suppose the sea was made.

The shards of blue glass

Became monsters.

And the schoolchildren fear them,

And wake, sweating from nightmares

In which the large, writhing beasts

Were eating them whole.

Such as I wake from the dreams of drowning

Tossed without end in some storm,

In which the green swells

Topple on me,

And I wake to rain on the roof

(which leaks)

On the little cottage.

I am close enough to feel the cool tendrils

Of the sea.

Its green brine beckons me,

But I fear not the monsters,

They look like puppets,

Bobbing and weaving and ducking

Amongst the swells.

I am frightened by the voice of the deep green,

Which makes a throaty sound,

That sometimes sounds like my name.

And I dare not venture to the shaking edge,

For it will swallow me up in a horrible crashing motion,

With a sucking sound and a wall of green.

Schoolchildren venture and wade,

Where the monsters cannot swim and glide.

But I can only stare from the top windows,

At the hulking beast that calls to me,

And I can only turn my back to the

Tendrils of sea-air,

The little fingers that urge me,

So alluringly,

Into the bigger arms of what

Threatens to eat me alive.

And leave my bones to the serpents.