Rocquaine Mermaid - Richard Fleming

She heaved herself up on a barnacled rock;
sea-water broke from her sun-blond hair
down over shoulders, freckled with salt:
a broad-breasted sea-nymph
launched from bright water.

No seal she, nor odd fish either,
but strangeness enough
in her queer duality.
Something feral
in those luminous eyes, some leonine thing
in the strong, broad face
turning, in sunlight,
to Lihou, Fort Grey.

Trapped
in triangular space,
among moonscape rocks, sea-wall, sky,
too close to shore or for comfort;
misplaced, adrift
in a place unfamiliar,
she saw me, heron-still
in chill water, staring, staring

and slid like a seal, soundlessly, smoothly,
into the rising tide’s rich, sweet sanctuary,

leaving me,
human me, her land-locked kin,
excluded, bereft, imprisoned in air,
with a longing to hold her, inhale
her salt skin,
to fill my rough hands with wet fistfuls of hair.

Richard Fleming

This poem first appeared in The Man Who Landed, as part of A GUERNSEY DOUBLE, a joint collection with poet, Peter Kenny.

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