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.
Jacqui Thewless
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/grey-seas/
