TALE OF A MERMAID

Kristen Lenea Ryberg, from Mermaid Series #1

Take a listen above for an intro and reading of the poem

~Mermaid by Rene’ Johnson, my lifeline.

4 a.m.

I wake from a dream, to salt water sting

detach oysters clamped to my tail in the night

Listen to the lullaby hiss of a contented sea

somersaulting softly, quietly drawing itself back to itself.

On the navy horizon, a fishing boat floats

stern lights blink-blur. I’d like to visit them, the fishermen

I swim close, hear the cabin’s door rhythmic thud, water slap the hull

coffee aromas the galley. If sailor on watch, I would grind the winch round

I’d wind it tight, then lay on deck, read by lamp-light, become reckless, watching.

Sometimes the stars are too endless, more than a glance, I spiral up,

float from my post, not as a ghost, but as a quantum leaping

into the beginning, when voice was a page and all things spoke

in couplets of rhyme, to a world without time.

Truth travelled in light years. Mermaids played in great waves.

All sea animals spoke in sonar, frequencies high and low.

This, is how I learned to sing for them. Split my form between earth and sea.

My grandmother lived as one who is heard, born on O-land Island

with one ear facing inward, the other coiled out as a Nautilus shell.

This, she passed down, the ability to funnel sound,

shape notes sometimes heard by humans.

Now, come close, see me clear,

My hair is amber-gold, viridian seagrass twine across my chest

where starfish rest. My tail is fire-opal green. I swim in amazonite seas

their surface a holographic mirror, scrolls before me. Sea otters play chase

laugh at my lumbering grace. Oysters are my favorite meal, a pearl rolls on my tongue,

asks for translation, I swallow it whole. The rest, I clean well to string on my crown.

Grandmother said to know my dream, visit the Octopus Queen

ask for a cast of the Oracle Bones, find her on her throne of abalone

tiny sand-dollars embroider her dress; hair braided in a tall seaweed nest.

First, swim where the pink anemones grow, past the pulsing red polyp bed

you will see rows of proud oysters breathing, 3, then 5, then 13

you will see giant welks stacked just so and 2 seahorses spinning

guarding her door of crystalline.

The queen, scatters the bones, instructs- use these words to poem your way home from the dream.

sword pearls foam whale snake bones

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