Bladderwrack

You give up your dream like a hero sitting on bladderwrack at the edge of ocean
calling on his mother whom he believed a goddess of the sea. He was half-divine,
at play in his dual self. The watercourse was always there and she was you-in-me,
a gray-green safety, swirl of hair. But one day when he put his foot on earth, she'd gone.
The gift had been withdrawn. Hermaphrodite had crossed and not come back, the way Jews in the Byzantine world forgot the Hebrew, read Holy Writ in Greek and chanted prayer
like flame from an unknown source.

                                                                                                                              Ruth Padel​