I have thought
why are there seven Seas
when the blue on a globe
looks like it all joins up
and how do you know where
one Sea begins and another ends
when water is not still like land
but moving
a drop of it is always somewhere else
than it lately was
blue fluid tumbling and washing
about in great waves
can’t be marked that way
and what of Oceans
the word that swallows up seas
in its sound
Ocean is depth itself
washed points that never meet
how do you count them
of the Oceans there is
only one I know
and so
it is the only one
there is
and it laughs at the
trifling warm-blooded
Seas for holiday-makers
Atlantic
floats and rages
at the edge of this isle
its cold has touched
my bones its waves
have ducked me
there is nothing so wild and real
so cold and ferocious
I think
it is the one true Ocean or Sea
and the others are only
parts of that
great thundering whole
and have names because the
Atlantic lets them
Illustration by Lenny Buckley
tcdrantandrave.wordpress.com 