So the story goes: Glámis, the bride

was a sad one when he was found by the tide

veiled seaspray, dead urchins

daughter of ambition, queen of blood

sickened by the dark fate of her deepest love

Sickened with herself. That it should come to this!

The flowering of waves on rock, her fruitless searching

for the survival, in part for the survival

in part searching, endlessly searching

and almost never finding, save for this last

sour sweep of jetsam from the seawrecked past

was the vessel of vision unevenly loaded?

At the tail end of dusk.

A siren song keening against the tempest of her mind

was she a bride still or must she seek out another

occupation – a teller of bridal tales, perhaps,

tailoring these veiled tears

Had been there before

A green Bette Davis sits under it

murmuring vain words of consolation

of sorrow, of tomorrows, of treasures lost and found and the fine

     edged abyss of bliss

The tint and glint of shimmering threads, of what could be a fair

     maidens bed never captured Glamis’ eyes–only the

     embroidered flags of Ran’s bellowing ships.

At length a white gull from afar alighted on a rock,

out of a small pale dusk at the edge of the world

and started chewing on a piece of seaweed;

she remembered this: storm-swept coastlines, her wine-coloured shorts

and sixpence worth of dulce in a small white paper bag

held in miscellaneous regard

undying grey lady gazing from the castle’s haunted windows,

     the bridal chair left unseated,

     her bloodied bare arms torn like silk caught in briars

The seagull paused, cleaning its beak on the rock, and spoke in a clear, bell-like voice.

Take up your pride girl and find your strength of spirit, all is not lost to you.

     For within you resides all you need to rise up and seek out a new love,

     a new strength to keep the species alive and to refresh the stagnating joy

     in your broken heart.