Yet another unsuccessful Lot's Wife poem
Here's a story: I stood
at the stern of the ship
and held the string, my mother
on the shore stood unwinding.
The parting tug soon lost
in ocean drag, in distance.
I knit that salt and wore it –
hairshirt, my husband said,
unhealed wound. But here
is my point: I went.
Wearing salt, looking back,
but I went.
3 Comments
Interesting… Is this about your relationship with your mother or your relationship to Canada?
I didn’t think it was about me at all … of course I might be wrong.
The story of the yarn and the ship is an Irish story, and a true one. I like the connection to the Lot’s Wife tale: salt and looking back. But somehow it doesn’t seem to be working.
Which makes, er, three attempts at approaching this story. I think it’s doomed.
There was an old lady of Lot’s Who left when the going got hot. She forgot and looked back and God blew His stack and plenty of salt now Lot’s got.
Sometimes I crack myself up.