Will you wait for us,
Scandies Rose ?
to always be your fishermen
for eternity,
the sea with her high swells
has our bodies in her
tidal *****,
our wives in maritime loss,
you were my love, my vessel,
and you went down with us
into January's cold, cold deep,
our five souls God's to keep.

It was the strangest of days,
That turned into the coldest of nights.
I lay there waiting for the Fisherman's return.
A promise of his blessing,
Before I headed out to warmer waters,
Until Summer was to return.
The red wine was now half empty,
The candles wax-ridden and burned.
The current shifted, it was time to return.
A fair maiden in a tavern,
Wrapped around the Fisherman's arms.
He gave her tokens she would treasure
I gave him curses of scorn.

Beneath the water lived a nymph, beautiful as
A flower, if you like woman with petals
Growing from out of their face
And lips adorned with myriad metals
Moving silently with infinite grace.

Fishermen who caught her, in alarm
Tossed her back with dismayed cries
Fearful that she would do them harm
When she exposed her fangs, darting from her eyes,
Forked tongues from each palm.

But apart from all that, she was a delightful creature
As proud as a catwalk model
Sexuality impressed into each feature
Death in each cuddle,
Poison injected from each freshly opening suture.

At the sea’s dark bottom lived the nymph
Devouring fish raw, terrifying sharks and barracuda,
Dining on shellfish and prawns for lunch;
Darting amongst Angel Fish and eels, a hungry aficionada,
Tearing into shreds what she could not crunch.

Gentle with her own kind until coition
Was complete, when if hungry she devoured
Her temporary mate without undue consideration,
No please or thank you. Feeling duly empowered
By her actions, as confirmed by her explosive, acrid indigestion.

No longer young, her children dead,
She glides through the water from China to France
A preposterous seaweed hat upon her head
And in several places, impaling her scaly flesh a serrated coral branch.
Her sartorial taste filling even the sharks with fin-quaking dread.

The last of the kind. The others are (literally) toast.
Protected by animal charities here and abroad
She gladly subsists on ambitious swimmers who venture far from the coast
All she can now catch or afford.
A capricious tyrant until the last, when, victim of a fisherman’s boast

She was hoist up like iniquitous cod
Out of the sea, paraded on the deck while she struggled for breath.
Shot at. Abused. Poked and speared with a steel tipped rod,
Dragged into the harbour, pummelled close to death.
Screaming out, as she in unexpected agony died: “I thought, I truly thought, I was god!”

I throw my gubbins out
in my net, casting for a
dinner to feed you
by spoon.

My words are gubbins.
Irritating impulse of
fingers and joints
bending around your waist.

Our speech is gubbins -
puked through esophagus
bile and awkward conversation.
A belch of early caught perch.

We make love like gubbins.
You flop wrongly, I flip coarsely.
Our toes knot and break.
We kiss backwards.

I cry gubbins
on your sweaty shirt.
Your gubbin caught dinner
still smudged on your cheek.

I wake up to your bucket of
gubbins from dinner next to the bed.
I bring it to my boat
to catch our next meal.

Tall round beams standing
in salty water, connecting
fishermen and star-fish gazers
with a moon-shaped bay
on the eastern Pacific.

They stand on land and step into sea,
as rolling barrels from Arctic grounds
tickle their lower legs.
A centipede of wood, this
outward- jutting wharf.

The fishermen sink expectant hooks;
the surfers haul shiny glass
banana-shaped boards of foam;
the weekenders come posing
baby strollers for picture shooting.

Each passing wall of blue
energy slows at reach of
shallow sand, deciding
whether to keep rolling or
transform into a steep stack

of snapping water. On big days
the sea legs shake all the
fishermen. They lock away
their sacrificial bait in rusty boxes
and collapse their fibered rods.

On calm days I step out to a
wooden bench and hang my
face between the rails. Running
people pass below, between the
knotted hips and creosoted thighs.

August buries this preserve
in such drizzle. Gulls go bundling
inside their sleek robes
of white feather, leaning
windward on worn bent knees.