surprised by a mermaid

if you were to touch me now

without warning

and while I am unprepared

if you were to slip up beneath me

submerged

and make unexpected contact

I would shiver

and recoil

and shake your hand from my clammy shoulder

and offer some guttural rejection

caught in a throat full of sea

and

I would shudder under your grey fingers

I who did not see you approach

and am unused to the approach

of any other

and especially of a one such as you

at this time of day

alone

and naked

and unaware

caught in the anger of the sea

fretting in this mighty undertow

if you were to touch me now

without warning

while I am unprepared

but

if you were to touch me

now

having given me this moment‘s pause

and now knowing what I now know

of this dry earth and its dead dust

I would gracefully

sink into the ocean of your arms

float on the soft spume of your briny breath

swim into the abyss of your wide-eyed words

hide under the swell of your limpid breasts

moor myself to the holdfast strands

of your sargasso hair

Chris reading Surprised By A Mermaid

Surprised By A Mermaid now appears in The Wrting Garden - Issue 8