Found in Willow Springs 87
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Maybe those sailors who mistook them for mermaids
liked their women with a little meat on them,
gray green skin patchy with algae.
Maybe they liked them almost hairless
except for a few spiky whiskers
on a homely-cute tush-shaped face.
Or maybe they were just men
who had been away from home a really long time.
Maybe they had almost forgotten
what it was like to cup a woman's breasts
or smell the oil of her on their fingers.
Or maybe they had never known. Some of them
were so young. Twelve. Thirteen. Cabin boys.
I think of them in the dank hulks of their caravels,
sketching a woman in air, tweaking her-
hair, eyes, hips-to their liking.
Or pulling a tooth from the jaw of a whale,
scrubbing it clean and inking a sweetheart on it.
Or scanning the water for manatees.
Who hasn’t done a thing like that?
Invented a lover out of air or bone or water?
All those years on my own in New York-
sometimes a blind date, couple of drinks
and desultory conversation with a stranger.
I remember walking into a room and seeing
whoever it was for the first time, hoping for-
I don't know. That something kind would swim up
to the surface. That I could nudge him into a human shape.
