I long to live through lengthening days at home beneath the sea,
With you my love, my darling one as precious as can be,
to leave behind all cares and woes embrace a life sublime,
The light is bright as gauzy night and you at last are mine.
We dine on oyster shells a-half and sip on salty tea,
while urchins nuzzle at our feet in hopes we’ll set them free.
Please tell me now, you ask of me, of life above on land.
I pause to think and take a drink and reach to kiss your hand.
Recall the day you found me dead on rocks beside the sea,
all worn and deeply injured, blood and bruises covered me.
The spectre of my soul remained, still tethered to my corpse
The choice was mine, you whispered fine, you cast your spell perforce
What stories can I tell you now, what song of sun be sung,
My life among the walking ones had hardly just begun.
The song, my love, I long to sing is one of waters deep
They had their chance, their time to dance, embraced their offers cheap.
I long to live my lengthening days at home beneath the sea,
With you my love, my darling one as precious as can be,
to leave behind the sand and sun embrace a life sublime,
The light is bright as gauzy night and you at last are mine.
And then there was the time
driving with my father back from the cottage. On the highway utility poles tick-tocking like a metronome calling forth a silver kind of music. He always wanted to know what I was going to be. Wanted me grown up. I looked out the window counted poles and watched tree tops tickle the belly of the moon.
And then there was the time that very same summer I started staying in the locker room to re-pack my bag after swim lessons to watch the lifeguard get ready. He was a boy just eighteen but to me he was like nothing I’d ever seen, freckled shoulders and rivulets of water down his back.
And then there was the time he visited me in a dream my boyhood room as dense as a nighttime forest, my bed a nest of moss and bows. He rested beside me on rough granite. He tucked his flute in his pack and offered me a chunk of bread. Who are you? I’ve never seen anything quite like you. I’m a faun, he said. How did you find me, I asked. Why you called me now didn’t you.
Not much bigger than me his chest was bare and broad as moonlight shifted, I could see where his waist gave way to buttocks becoming the hind of a goat, the soft brown hair surprized with white and blonde. He kicked the earth with his hoof, shifted on the rocks and offered me a bite of his apple. But where do you live? Just that way–he cocked his head over his shoulder. You should come and see. I can’t.
And then there was the time I almost told my father what I wanted to be. Past Lake of the Woods in the front of the car with my father the crunch of tires on gravel growing to the hum of asphalt. I want to be a priest, I said, to make God happy. But really, I only wanted to be as full and bright as the moon.
He came for tea one gaslit night, ‘most halfway through September,
to ask for her sweet company if she would but surrender.
The house was high upon a hill, in disrepair left vacant,
apart from her, and sisters three like rats within the basement.
“Invite me in”, he said to her. She then became suspicious.
Near silent in his pulchritude, his countenance delicious.
Orion’s Belt cleared top the trees that night of mazarine.
He wore a suit of finest silk, a pearl pin that gleamed.
“I’ve seen you once before”, she said, for something inside trembled.
“So far away when days were long, dear friends there all assembled”.
His yaff was large enough that night to fill the grubby room.
“I’m not the one”, he laughed. “Now come, let joy relieve your gloom”.
She set a place, cleared off the dust the years'd accumulated.
Like silver gongs from wedding songs her pulse accelerated.
He put his hand around her waist before he drew her near.
“To all who rest beneath this roof, I’ve come to make it clear
that you are mine as leaf needs vine. You’re not hallucinating.”
His breath was sweet as tainted meat yet still intoxicating.
I’d like to say she drove him off, rebuffed his rude advances,
she cuddled in without a fight, she’d rather take her chances.
His faithful odalisque that night she willingly became.
They dined on oysters in the shell, played wicked parlour games.
Was with a chiaroscuran heart through nights she held him near.
A love within her breast burned bright beneath it smouldered fear.
The vespers bells rang true and clear the night he finally told her
how he would leave her all alone with no one left to hold her.
No dragoman could make it clearer, his words were crystalline.
Her rooms grew dim no light shone in the atmosphere sublime.
She told me this, I know it’s true though years have passed me by.
“Be sure”, she said, “to take great care when dreaming of a sky
of prairie blue, so deep and wide, a life without repentance
is yours my son, most dearly won, no gaoler’s cruel sentence”.
Her hand in mine close to my heart the night she last departed,
I sent her ‘cross the ocean dark a continent uncharted.
And still, I wait for his return. She said he’d come to find me.
No solitude can comfort me, no altar here enshrines me.
The grass is high by garden’s gate, trees hide the moon penumbral.
My life too long feels like a song as wasted as the tundra.
A silk cravat he used to wear lies by his riding glove.
His pearl pin weeps a drop of blood as crimson as her love.
JC Cortens is a poet and educator living in Vancouver, B.C. Canada.
He responds to a fractured world from a place of compassion and curiosity. His current obsessions include exploring the intersection of identity, sexuality, and the search for the Divine. This synergetic site of healing explores questions of the personal and the political where writing becomes the ultimate expression of that which is currently known and beyond knowing.
JC’s poems have appeared in The Maynard, The Holy Male, Art & Poetry Anthology, an almost hand beckoning. With composer Carolyn A. Quick, he presented an original art song Donum Aquae: Gift of Water (from the Book of Prayers) in Art Song Lab’s festival in June 2018. His poem There is in me received an Honourable Mention in the Delta Literary Arts Society Spring 2024 Poetry Contest.
