Sexing the Sea

Jennifer Paige©2004

 

 

I. Proteus

You watched me that morning
Smelling of brine and seaweed
Inexorably woven with the wind
Still I did not know you

Your nature ever-shifting
Panting after me
You spent yourself around my ankles
Wave after wave
Seeping into alluvium underfoot
Tangling clammy fingers in my hair

I was green and laughing then
Running too fast and
Dancing on the sand
Freckled from too much sun
Speckled lithe and lilting
Twirling white skirts above my knees
With your breath you blew them higher
Craving the glimpse of white thighs
Brailled by your chill gaze

Forcing yourself through gauzy shift
You found my flesh
A mingled sheen of mist and perspiration
I tumbled to the earth
I gasped for breath

You sent the ocean swell
Covered me in a rush of mercurial brown and gray
Lapping frantic and pulling against me
Entering my nose and ears and eyes
Eager tongue parting lips and thighs

You slinked away
Leaving me limp and breathless against the land

I had a taste for salt then…

II. Mannan

You beckon me
I arise liquid as you lead
Drawn tidal
Lured by my body
Out among the boulders on the shore
Bare feet cold
White stones beneath the moon

The sea recedes
Reveals a smooth shelf of strand
Stretched far

Your voice in the distance
The sound of stallion hooves
Pounds the land
Splendorous mane flies in white foam

The first wave fizzes at my feet
Sighs at a touch of my flesh
The second entices
Pulls me nearer
By the third I am knee-deep
And the fourth froths between my thighs
Wraps wet about my waist your emerald promise
A fifth lifts buoyant breasts anticipating
The bite of your kiss
The sixth wave pitches my legs from beneath me
Floats me like Bran's longboat
The seventh swell swirls my hair about us
A burnished veil for our bridal bed
On the crest of the eighth I am fast embraced
Covered in the wild woad of your body
Drowned on the ninth
Mightiest of waves

I sink everdown
Into your depth
Where I am pale treasure
I carry your seahorse progeny
The conch enthroned queen joins the Feast of Age

III. Atlantis

She will sink
A Lemurian submersible
A narrow white sarcophagus
Into the deep

She will never age
Adrift on undulating currents
Will-propelled

She will find her haven
A final rest at rifts edge
Before a gaping cavern
The sub-marean vulva of Earth

She will discover
The lambant city
Enshrouded in sea woad

She will penetrate forbidden gates
Learn a foreign tongue
Write a ciphered script

She will share the story of catastrophe
Worship cetacean gods
Graceful with the weight of water

She will feed on crustaceous fruit
And thus be fed upon
A phosphorus star of the sea

 

 

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