Oriel



Can someone please come and help me

to see the camouflage of summers?

I haven’t felt this joy for so long

the existence of samphire is beyond me


I cannot eat, only feed

I cannot sleep, only close my eyes and hope

that the golden oriole flies 
                         
       through the oriolum

            bringing the orient pearl

                   and sand dollars

Why? I wonder fruitlessly

longing for a conclusion

If only the sea scalpel would fall

and I’ll never want for anything again


Only Oriel shining over the balustrade

in her night cloak, bright as a star

sticking pins into a banana

and crying for mercy


Only Oriel can save me

who cares not but loves

who dances free in the dazzling breeze


Who is happy

just to walk out the next day

flowing, the silken heir, the gossamer dress

having made the pickles





Notes:


1. Oriel in architecture: A bay window especially polygonal in plan.
2. Samphire: 1) A fleshy apiaceous European sea coast plant (Crithmum Maritimum) used for pickles 2) Common glasswort (Salicornia herbacea).
3. New world orioles (birds) are not closely related to old world ones – but both are bright yellow marked with black. Old world orioles are related to the crow family.
4. Oriolum (Latin) Meaning portico or hall.
5. Orient, meaning eastern, also means bright, lustrous, pellucid and ‘rising as the sun’ and also ‘to face east’. Said of superior gems, the most perfect being anciently found in the east.
6. Sand dollar: Any of several flat circular sea urchins which live on sandy bottoms (e.g. Echinarachnius parma).
7. Orientation: Act or process, or state of placing in time and space.
8. Polygon: A figure with many angles and thus many sides.
9 In ‘who cares not but loves’, ‘cares’ is used in the sense of ‘worries’.