For Those Who Dream of Exotic Places
I might sail over the outmost edge of the ocean.
Ride the peaks and troughs of grey green,
winter green, glass green waves.
Follow the wake of selkies and orca.
In the autumn, terns flock and converge,
to wade in the shallows.
Off the Bass Rock, wild geese flutter
their slipper white wings and take flight.
Bound for southerly Sossusvlei, Zanzibar,
they leave a rumour of snow in the air.
By late November, the horizon is vivid and wide,
As if a child has emptied their paint box over the sky.
At owlight, the wind rushes in, straight from Archangel,
transforming the sea into frozen stars.
Once, I climbed the cliffs and picked samphire.
I would lie on a high ledge amongst thrift and sea-pinks.
I’d wade through the burn to the sandbanks,
gathering mussels and peppery dulse
In the rockpools, fish darted and span,
their eyes liquid, luminous.
Now, the world is only this beach, this harbour.
By summer, it will be smaller and hard as a stone.
A pebble rubbed smooth by the stramash of storms.
Pink quartz and feldspar. Blue sea glass, frosted with salt.
Or perhaps, if I’m lucky, a sapphire, a cairngorm, a topaz.
Later still, I’ll be left with a handful of sand.
A peck of singing white sand, half a billion years old.
Tiny grains of silica, coral and seashells, that shift with the wind.
Last of all, I’ll take solace in the erosion,
The final wearing away
of limestone and gypsum and garnets.
I’ll lie dreaming, bleached white and quiet,
Beneath crushed sea anemones.
Buried under the sand and the weight of time,
I shall fade and diminish and vanish.
Biography
Sasha Saben Callaghan is a writer and digital artist. She was a winner of the 2016 ‘A Public Space’ Emerging Writer Fellowship and the 2019 Pen to Paper Awards. Her poetry, short stories and illustrations have been published in a wide range of magazines and journals.
Sasha’s lived experience of disability and impairment is a major influence on her work.