I
If I write about you, will you go away?
Your reptilian stare, leathery grin, chilling
skin follow me everywhere. It’s disconcerting.
You keep popping up without warning,
that alarming sneer, so hoity toity!
Why don’t you piss off back
down deep? No-one will miss
you here. You don’t fit in.
Dump the rubber shell suit, try navy blue
anorak, polyester trousers from Tesco. Stop eating
strange fish. What’s wrong with mince and tatties?
Your body odour is hard to ignore, try
Impulse Sweet Smile. Join the SWRI,
take up baking…I’m quite partial to a Gypsy
Cream. And I’ve been meaning to ask, why
are there jelly fish on your lawn?
II
I’m old as the sea and twice as deep.
I was born in the land where memories sleep.
History will keep repeating the subsonic beep
of your fears. Like surf drawing the beach
I will return, to be hanged by the neck
till almost dead but never quiet.
III
Being entirely ocean going, leatherbacks never encounter barriers in the sea that they cannot swim around.
‘They’re not used to any kind of restraint, they’ve never seen a wall,’ Jenny McCloud, the aquarium’s rescue director said to The Shetland Post.
‘They’ll continue to struggle, they’ll continue to swim forward.’
The Purple Hermit 