THE OLD FISHERMAN:

He was born smelling of salt, within the sound of the sea,

Of ancestors whose souls now in gulls, flying high & free,

With grandfather, father, brothers & now with his sons,

Out in all weather, storms, wind & beneath burning sun,

From his tender years, working all hours till ripe old age,

Losing the youth on the way, becoming salted old sage,

Of saline creaking hull & old weathered cracked hands,

Of wide oceans afar & between so many foreign lands,

Leaving behind mother, then wife & small little babes,

For months on end, those on land praying & so afraid,

Old nets sewn, re-sewn & mended, then cast far flung,

To where once he´d heard songs the mermaids sung,

To the places where dolphins laughed & whales played,

Places where his eyes wept & his skin was sore & flayed,

Now the fish have swum away with his long-gone years,

With pipe-clenched lips & cold bones now clad in furs,

He sits huddled old, within his wrinkled briny dreams,

Tears of his past, running in jowled furrowed streams,

He smells the Galician sea upon his old wife´s breath,

And he knows it´s time to go to his deep saline death.