Muses

Here are her muses, ocean borne,
beach combed. Her teenage confusions
and mumbling frozen tongue that can win
no arguments bring her out here, where
stories are written in a language
she understands.

Endless tourists snap their picturesque
romance of seals and seabirds, the painted
clinker-built boats. She doesn't talk to them,
hooded parka pulled tight, alone on beach
below ancient stone pier, touching base
with her realm.

Among the Sulphur perfumed seaweed,
things speak to her. Blue, blue, fishing nets
twisted into gordian knots. Barbed wire, rusted
orange and no friend of the unwary. A yellow
fish-box. A clear bottle of Klondyker's vodka –
a mostly empty message.

Excited tourists photograph a pod of orcas,
she sees oil rigs, trawlers netting vast subsidies,
a white sheep skull poking ridiculous teeth
through the weed. She pockets a lava rock
from Iceland, maybe sell it to a tourist after,
maybe not.

And here, a bird with a broken neck, bright
feathers catching sun, dead eye pinned to the sky
perhaps homesick. If she could only speak
to others as this bird speaks to her, say
all that matters, ever matters, is to
honor the world before you.