A little poetic Selkie engagement with Virginia Woolf

Selkie, a sea tale. CD Release Concerts March 29 & 30 2013. Music of Elliot Cole. Lyrics by Misha Penton

Worlds wholly imaginary, intangible, just-out-of-reach; a place and time, outside of place and time...an almost afternoon...a walk through a church belled town, its paths all tiger lily for spring, you stand by a market stall, leaning on a splintered cross beam railing...I dreamed a sea gabled house with widows walk, my skirts all rustle whisper, rustle whisper, rustle whisper...sand smoothed out like honeyed silk.

(quotes below from Virginia Woolf's The Waves)

a glimpse of Selkie...

Suspend for a moment, reason. Suspend of a moment, a desire to order, to know, to understand, grasp, and elucidate. Instead, allow words, music and images to simply — maybe powerfully — wash over, to flood forth, even if, at first, perhaps, it may feel like a drowning...:

Under the waters

her skin is smooth and fragrant, wet and oiled. She is secretive, playful, fierce.

She is Mystery, "the girl who had shaken her head and made all the jewels, the topaz, the aquamarine, the water-coloured jewels with sparks of fire in them, dance, now bared her brows and with wide-opened eyes drove a straight pathway over the waves”.

This time

the small island, barely connected to the mainland, revealed no seal being, who bobbed her beckoning head to us— in a seduction to dash our bodies against deceptive stone and join her in the fearless sea

This time

we scrambled over the island's sharpened spires of greywacke and mudstone
the inlet a frothy spin and swirl of seafoam cream

This time

even the autumn sun couldn't penetrate the sea scented fairy grotto trees

This time

we pressed on from the mainland even as the post-equinox sunlight heralded the coming of the tide, "even my body now lets the light through"

This time

facing the shore, we saw the rising water isolate us from the beach: how deep? how fast?: six hours to wait, well past dark, for low tide's ebb?

This time

I, in frantic panic, held My Love's hand as we forded to the strand, "now the tide sinks. Now the trees come to earth; the brisk waves that slap my ribs rock more gently, and my heart rides at anchor, like a sailing-boat whose sails slide slowly down on to the white deck"

This time

I was almost taken

"There is nothing staid, nothing settled in this universe"