companion piece to 'The Mariner"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Mermaid
Was it ever enough that she would appear
from the foam of a rounded swell to sigh
with the whole dark soul of the sea in his ear,
urging him darkly to take her, to die?
The cold salt silk of her skin against his,
the swell of her own small breast like the swell
of the sea itself ~ the salt of her kiss,
the pulse of her sunken heart like a knell.
And all of her thus in his arms until
the breaker recedes and beckons her back,
drawing her down and away and beneath,
forsaking him there on his barnacled rock,
forsaking his desolate arms to trail
where the sinuous seaweeds writhe and wreathe.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bradley Omanson" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2008 3:39 PM
Subject: "The Mariner"
The Mariner
The vibration singing through all my veins
is the beating of endless tropical rains,
a pulsation of far-off breakers breaking,
with every tendril of hair on my head
the cry of a gull.
I am eighty years dead,
having perished at sea in a howling squall
off the African cape when a monstrous swell
overtowered the deck and crushed me choking
into the brine.
Now I drift without end
through a strange latitude, a slackened soul
drawn by a distant memory of wind,
past feeling but hardly at peace, possessed
of a thirst that will admit no slaking,
of a restlessness that will not rest.
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