Ships scrawl cursive across ultramarine,
lines of wake, swirling foam.
Leaping dolphins and sailfish
provide punctuation.
Foghorns moan. Waves crash.
Whales reveal secrets
in madrigals we cannot decipher.
Crab drowse among soft-spoken reeds.
Oysters and clams huddle
in calcified silence.
Megalodon sharks’ teeth
and ammonites spill from her banks,
document ancient history.
Sunken ships and lost cities recline
deep in trenches.
They are the missing chapters.
The ocean speaks in sea-green tongues,
eerie mantra of water draining riprap.
Ann Howells
Ann Howells edited Illya’s Honey for eighteen years. Recent books: So Long As We Speak Their Names (Kelsay Books, 2019) and Painting the Pinwheel Sky (Assure Press, 2020). Chapbooks Black Crow in Flight and Softly Beating Wings were published through contests.
Ann’s work appears in Nimrod, Magma, and Crannog, among others.