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Currajah

[a Walleah Press blog]

LORIN FORD

   Amanuensis

A jar of seashells, chosen

each for no particular reason

or difference

 

the slant of light, perhaps,

on an enamelled pattern, a periwinkle’s

exposed inner spiral,

 

an abalone shell

that’s lost its sheen. Nothing

taken alive.

 

What’s here’s been wave-tossed

and shifted twice a day

for years around rock pools

 

or stranded with seaweed

at the tide line, where sun

and salt bleach out all traces

 

of biography. The sea coughs up

words that choke in the throat.

We surface, or drown.