A selkie is a magical creature that appears in Irish, Scandinavian, and Native folklore: a seal in the water who can transform into a woman on land… Her stories are often sad because she is caught between the demands of the earth and the sea. In some versions, she is captured by a man who takes her coat, so she can’t transform back into a seal and be free in the ocean. In others, she gives up her life as a woman, transforming back into a seal even though she knows she can’t go back, in order to save the human man she loves – a sailor who is trapped in a storm at sea. Either way, whether she has a choice or not, her experience is one of loss. My poem is a picture of redemption for the selkie’s relationship with her lover. Rather than being torn between her two selves, she chooses to be human, and even though she passes through the trial of the desert, she finds in her experience of real love an ocean that is deeper and more beautiful than any she has ever known. For me, the sel...
Women's Spiritual Poetry