Today I cut my sail.

It was 10 meters high — 3 wide at the base.

A sail that had lived, it wore it’s adventures in it’s thinning middle where the fibres flopped.

I had painted it, Pollock style, in translucent blues and opaque white dripped over cryptic black to simulate the ocean. An ocean bound by a sturdy edging of zigzagged stitching and solid metal cleats.

Rolled out on the dusty ground between the olives, the sail, out of it’s element, ruffle-bucked restlessly where the breeze slid underneath

and I, walking backwards on top, adjusted the mark- making to accommodate the movement; moving rhythmically, swinging oil paint from one side to the other — the arm arcs becoming wider as the huge triangle accepted the imaginary hieroglyphics- and I found myself literally immersed in my own story.

As the paint soaked in, the dance was repeated with liquid layers of azure blues and greens — until the dust became water and gleamed as the sun dipped behind the mountains.

That was then.

The painted sail became an art piece — exhibited and admired for it’s evocation of full fathom five and the cries of struggling migrants.

Today I dragged the sail out of it’s rolled up storage — expecting rot, carcasses- mold…

Obediently, it resigned itself to examination — (passive now, no fluttering expectation)

And, as I took the scissors to it, I heard a sigh and I understood that it was ready for a new, albeit more reduced role in the world.