My Love Affair with the Sea

I can feel the Sea’s ebb and flow run deep within my veins
Like a lover met long ago it has its pleasures and its pains
I tell myself I can turn my back and walk away
But all too soon the Sea has me once again in its sway.
As a small child she sang me soothing lullabies
At night she gently filled my soul and stilled my cries
By day I talked to her and played at the water’s edge
I learned her ways and became imbued with her knowledge.

As I grew older and grew to love the Sea’s every mood
Her mysterious voice spoke through my dreams and in my blood
Day after day, minute after minute, she throws herself at the shore
Always having to slide back again, regroup, and hurl herself once more
With endless patience she slowly claims for herself the land
Until one day where there was once red earth, there is white sea sand
I love to watch the way she lets go of things she no longer needs
Myriads of tiny shells form a kaleidoscope on the ocean floor
Jump into the waves and, dumped on the sand, part of the Sea no more.

I can recall the day when she took two of my brother’s friends into her thrall
On a clear summer day with ice cold Atlantic singing a seductive siren call
A tourist came too near and her waves claimed him for her own
The boy’s jumped in, swam him back to the rocks and put him safely down
The one boy, an epileptic, his disease triggered by the numbing cold
Lost consciousness, his friend stayed with him and side by side they were to drown.
On the dead the Sea’s deep creatures feed until the Sea releases her hold
Came the day the waves picked up the boys, threw what was left upon the shore
Identification fell to my father steeled by many years at sea and in the war
When he returned that day it was the first time I had ever seen him cry
I was never to forget that in the Sea was a very hard and cruel way to die.

But still the wild, wicked Sea in all her moods holds court over me
Her capricious laugh as waves break and beckon, calling me enticingly
Although I no longer venture where they can clutch and drag me too easily
Now an epileptic myself, I remember well the horror of all those years ago
It haunts my mind and how to conquer the fear of drowning I don’t know.
But the Sea and I are lovers still; how often the one you love the most
Is the one who can destroy you at will, but I love her regardless of the cost.
Her iridescence at night as the moon rides silver in her midnight blue
The limpid greens of her playful shallows, the deeper emerald hue
The millions of beings she sustains – life forms so varied, so enriching
Looking at the Sea and her ever changing moods that I find so bewitching
I know that her storms find their reflection in the storms life has thrown my way
And that her still, sweet, beguiling, calm and tranquil side is that which sustains my day.