As children we seem to skim across surfaces
Of our days’ tranquil lakes

Like the basilisk running on hind legs
Out-pacing our (lesser than Jesus) predators

Impossibly drowning them in the wake
Of that chase, as we are learning to shield ourselves

By striking first, so as not to feel
that blow of life’s cruel anger and exhaust...

We know how to wade the weeping
Wreckages of our mistakes & missed opportunities;

Mistook with misunderstanding’s book:
"An Idiot’s Guide to the Malady of Mishaps / Moroseness."

As adults we grow the necessary gills
To breathe our own tears' folkloric oceans seeming

Vast as Mithra’s museums of mummified cries,
Drowned moments we silenced inner deep blues' / sky.

We are Merfolk,
Watching here our ebbing tides

How once we had legs like ballerinas, swift & light
Like our worries to aging blight

Stymied timely introduction to Triton nights….
Deftly anticipating the arrival of hindsight’s

Deepest fight to catch the rye and nimble child
Above us now, while we watch them -- Kites

Of memories as in our far away / freedoms
On the surface of our wars' tear filled lakes

Losing our inner / liquid flight…
From youthful wings to fins, and wordless sting

Learning to sink, swim, and breathe
Again-- Life :
                       our unheard Ariel under the sea…

We are Merfolk of dreams oceanic kisses
Voiceless we will lack magic to raise our wishes

We learn to sing in seaweed with
Music of happenstance and waves of need

We are similar to those lost depths
Inequalities and struggles all abyssal deep.

So together as Merfolk must quiet that  loud sea
Loss & histories of mountains / memory

Nautiluses drowning in love’s diminishing poetry,
We are merfolk, submariners toward mystery...