<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=us-ascii"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><p class="">Salt</p><p class=""><i class="">for my 5<sup class="">th</sup> great-grandmother, buried at sea in 1755, first name unknown</i></p><div class=""> <br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p class="">I imagine cormorants, black against rinsed sky, fog</p><p class="">a second skin, your hands on the ship's slick rail to steady</p><p class="">yourself against the tide that day you fled. I imagine</p><div class=""> <br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p class="">your leave-taking, rough unpainted door, hedgerow</p><p class="">of hawthorn in bud, blue song-thrush eggs safe in their nest,</p><p class="">left behind with your idle loom. Ulster's kings of commerce</p><div class=""> <br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p class="">no longer trade in linen, raised the rent, pressed your life to the margins.</p><p class="">Your family can only imagine freedom and plenty somewhere that is not home.</p><p class="">A rough migration along the curve of the earth leaves the Irish Sea behind,</p><div class=""> <br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p class="">your ears filled with wind, heaven past the horizon, just out of reach.</p><p class="">I imagine ingots of light igniting the waves as smallpox ignites</p><p class="">your cheeks, your fevered dreams of home, the hawthorn buds, open,</p><div class=""> <br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p class="">their honeyed scent, a thrush's fluting song, while on this ship,</p><p class="">three children, John, Jacob, Sarah, clutch their father's homespun shirt,</p><p class="">bereft. I imagine a life, a death, your memory a whisper,</p><div class=""> <br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p class="">nameless. No shroud save your linen apron. No <em class="">Memento mori </em></p><p class="">on lichened stone. The salt of fever and tears joins all the unnamed</p><p class="">beneath the waves, your life just so much salt in the wound of the world.</p><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Susan Lamont</div><div class=""><br class=""></div></body></html>