Poem to the Sea

She’s a cunning bitch,
waits at the periphery
for double vision
then one light chop and
vertigo sinks
like a toy boat down the ear canal.

It’s a miserable existence
on this trawler,
5 a.m. bacon frying
1800 r.p.m. gastric juices brining
sifto salt up the nose,
guts sliding like a fish on a wet board;

so tie me leeward and bury me
with coffee fumes,
diesel, potato scraps and egg.

Leaning over this edge
nothing is as constant as the
sea always moving;

even the swell of my breasts
makes me sick.

:: Carolyn Borsman, in Going for Coffee (1981)