It wasn’t just the salt on my skin
The golden shimmer on the rippling shore
It wasn’t my immersion into cool sloshing waves
Nor the sweet grip of the tide on my back.
I lay, bobbing on the ever changing surface
And felt the swell take over me.
It wasn’t just the swimming
It was the giving of myself to a power greater than my limbs could fathom
The surrender to a pull that knows no end
Ruled by moon perhaps but I prefer the tilting theory
A basin tipped by a whirling sphere
A sphere tipped by an unknow hand.
So I dove under.
Forgot the orange peel that had beached me for years
The uneven tone of a too many wobbling folds.
I swam. I swam. I swam.
I was mermaid for a day until the dusky touch of a falling sun
Beckoned me back to shore.
(C)Slumpless