<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><p style="font-size: 18.66666603088379px;" class="">Salt<br class=""><br class=""></p><p style="font-size: 18.66666603088379px;" class=""><i class="">for my 5<sup class="">th</sup> great-grandmother, buried at sea in 1755, first name unknown, wife of Michael Clifford</i></p><div class=""><br class=""></div><p style="font-size: 18.66666603088379px;" class="">I imagine cormorants, black against rinsed sky, fog<br class="">a second skin, hands on the ship’s slick rail to steady<br class="">yourself against the tide that day you fled. I imagine</p><p style="font-size: 18.66666603088379px;" class="">your leave-taking, rough unpainted door, hedgerow<br class="">of hawthorn in bud, blue song-thrush eggs safe in their nest,<br class="">left behind with your idle loom. Ulster’s kings of commerce</p><p style="font-size: 18.66666603088379px;" class="">pressed your life to the margins, no longer trade in linen, and you<br class="">can only imagine freedom and plenty somewhere away from home.<br class="">A rough migration along the curve of the earth leaves the Irish Sea behind,</p><p style="font-size: 18.66666603088379px;" class="">your ears filled with wind, heaven just past the horizon, out of your reach.<br class="">I imagine ingots of light igniting the waves as smallpox ignites<br class="">your cheeks, your fevered dreams of home, the hawthorn buds open,</p><p style="font-size: 18.66666603088379px;" class="">their honeyed scent, a thrush’s fluting song, while on this ship,<br class="">three children, John, Jacob, Sarah, clutch your homespun skirt,<br class="">bereft. I imagine a life, a death. Your memory a whisper,</p><p style="font-size: 18.66666603088379px;" class="">nameless. No shroud save your linen apron. No <em class="">Momento mori<br class=""></em>on lichened stone. The salt of fever and tears joins all the unnamed<br class="">beneath the waves, your life just so much salt in the wound of the world.</p><p style="font-size: 18.66666603088379px;" class="">Elizabeth Painter Clifford Presenté</p><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><span style="font-size: 18.66666603088379px;" class="">- Susan Collier Lamont</span></div></div></body></html>