Waiting to Inhale …

Washed ashore to her native beach by an emotional storm,
she knew instantly that something was different;
what, she couldn’t tell.
She vaguely recognised the expressions,
but could not place all the faces that hovered around
The aroma of languid coffee evenings,
and lavender soaked love-making wafted above the salty, costal air,
drowning the silent screams of her ship-wreck saga.
Shortly after her return, some friends drifted away to a distance,
into the private confines of stray rocks.
Others gently turned their back,
casting coy looks over slumped shoulders and heaving breasts.
And then she knew what …
The fisher-girls of her quaint village had new playmates
Corals, coloured shells, pebbles and sea insects meant nothing anymore.
Love was in the air, and had come to stay.
Stung by cold, not caused by her days at sea, she felt alone in an instant;
like a cast away aground her own abode,
lost in a suddenly strange land.

Then one day, boats of varying sizes materialised,
and wisped away the ghosts of her youth,
Her childhood memories eagerly mounted the boats,
to embark upon a journey to a hitherto undiscovered, and mystically unknown land

Uninvolved, she viewed the world through the occasional postcard
and traced a small Towner’s growth from friend to lover, wife to mother
The epistle ballads often paid ode to her luck with solitude
Yet she ached for the pain of motion, and the agony of conjugal complications
Her tired feet were sore from a static inertia,
that waiting on the shore for her boat to magically appear, brought her.
She finally cast a net in baited breath and waited …
With each passing wave, her net returned empty handed
and gradually lost its beauty to the onslaught of the sea
Ripped up, it let even the occasional fish slip by.
Days turned to months,
The nights got cold, and the days of waiting colder;
and yet time refused to pass for one child-woman of the fisher-folk.

Sometimes a good tide, briefly brought back her companions
They were glad to find at least one part of their lives unchanged
and immensely thankful for the loneliness of a singular fisherwoman,
who still casts her frayed net out into the sea each day,
only to sleep hungry, each night!