Grey Seas Poem by Jacqui Thewless

I stayed in Scotland as a girl, on the East coast:
a kind of salty smell and gritty sand.
When I was ten I learned about selchies;
those seals who are only sometime-seals; sometimes human

standing on my rock with deep water
washing about, I could imagine
a seal
rising from the waves.


There was a crevice like a kind of cave nearby,
that was sheltered from wind
and from the ordinary people passing.

We dwelt by a lighthouse. There were stories
of whales, once - stranded on the big shores of Dundee.
I saw
seal pups on our small beach one day,
their mother keeping her distance.


My mother said - Keep off the bay till they have gone.
Look! You can see them from up here.

I might have wanted to go down
to hold them
as the grey seas had held me.