I was
the daughter of a fisherman and the granddaughter of a sailor, so the sea was ever
present for me growing up, at home hearing
blood chilling stories about frozen Arctic voyages and torpedoes or how my dad
fell in the dock aged 9 and had to be rescued. At school we learned about the
fisherman’s ganseys that had a distinct pattern for every fishing town, for
easy recognition of drowned trawlermen. My mum had been childhood friends with
the brother of one of those lost in December 1959 on the Red Falcon and it was
too easy to burst into tears imagining those hopeful children waiting for their
Dad to come home from sea for Christmas discovering instead that all hands had
been lost.
Back in
the 70s when kids were free-range, we’d go round in packs and spend most
summers on the beach, taking a pop bottle filled with very dilute cordial,
white bread and beef-paste butties and a towel (you wore your cossie under your
clothes) we’d fish for crabs off the jetty with safety pins, a ‘wishing stone’
for a weight and garden string, using mussels for bait, so you’d think I’d be a
natural water baby, but nope, water held equal amounts of fascination and abject
terror for me, I just about managed to get my ‘yellow stripe’ for doggy
paddling a width of the pool and have tried very hard to stay dry ever since.
So the only time I’ve ever made waves was on a
holiday on the Severn and Avon in a narrow boat when I fell (got thrown as a
joke) overboard and very nearly drowned. The perpetrator shall remain un-named
but was a professional sailor and PADI instructor. I think he regretted it when
he had to heft me out dripping wet, wind milling my arms and whooping lungfuls
of water.
Water
baby
You are Aquarius they told her
showed her a
picture of a squiggle man - a jar up on his shoulder
they bought her Aquamanda for her bath
water was
turquoise and it leapt and frilled
they told her that the moon was her ascendant
filled her full of
films dark water rising like machinery: toiling old.
She swam while sleeping
pale green, eau de
Nile - a viscous jelly
that supported her and she cut through and left no
wrinkle
neither did the
fish - mottled with sunlight
near the top no
weeds reached slimy tendrils round her ankle.
She did the wreck trek
walked out to a
made-up world
where mer-babes slept in flooded cots and bells
dull-glugged instead of pealed.
She lay bellied on the beach
dug her elbows in
and swam in two inch pools- hair a stream.
Reality was cold and smelled of bleach
she gagged - the
rubber hurt her head
and underneath she chugged and burnt
a whale and clunky, skin like pale suede.
Rachel McGladdery
1 comments:
Great post, sharp and sweet and loved the poem.
Post a Comment