Sea-Longing

Forty seas static in a room, quiet motionless and yet I bring in something with me. Inchoate, restless, rearing at the very  walls of the gallery. The echoes do  not escape my frame, layers of clothing absorb the sound, cloaking me in  rushing movement. 

A thin presence pressing outward from the brume. A dark shadow: Coastline cast clearest into focus by a cut of light, solid in the  colour’s blend. The detail is  haze, but the faint city, knife-thin on the horizon, promises me. 

Another, an inky, textured expanse looms below, and up from it, mist rises into a trunk of  blue cloud. Distant golden light catches on every fold of water. I hover from frame to frame, my  Eyes each time, snapping to the centre.

Wales flits in and out of view,  clear one moment, over brown estuary water and vanishes the next into the implication of a dramatic  roiling sky. Eighty eyes look out across the waters, looking for  something. 

Alone in the room, I shift my  weight, one foot after the other, letting the creaking floor cover the blood surging behind my ears. Restless, I keep still before each  and every sea. Bury the urge to  turn the camera, to look back. 

I cannot stay long or I’ll fall
away into the brume. Inside at least
I’m fixed in place, but leaving 
into daylight, the sound washes out
leaving me empty and Zugunruhe, 
migratory panic, wells up and slowly
quells as waves crest and roll 

over passing cars.