The Sailor's Wife

She’s one lonely soul with occasional Nosebleed, all from the sea-salt of distant Waves, charmed to weariness by breezes powerful enough To unfurl umbrellas rolled behind Grandfather’s clock. She combs her lofty hair seawards, with particles, flimsy and Delicately grey, tiny and microscopic, storming the sea in their looseness. She hopes to borrow the strength of the waves And attract her wayward husband’s lost attention imprisoned By the west and south seas. Her letters, before they reach him on the fragrant sails Of running fleets, get partially soaked by lack of trust And the impatience of the post. She needs him. Just his body and soul. She misses his kisses, so full of the breath of sea-whisky. And he misses, though not terribly, Her long, brunette hair, A single black sail of bedtime voyages With patterns of gentle, pulsating tempests When only two specks of light from a voyeur’s eyes Light up the hidden corners of the two souls. She misses his sailor’s whistling power, Loud and musical, Like the squawk of an inebriated, singing eagle, Which is sexy to her young and whimsical ears Not the rums he ships home late in November, In readiness for lonesome, tenebrous Christmas, To her to keep her company — Among ten-or-six foreign candles she lights in the face of storms To dare the raging sea-going madness of absent men.