I know you, Jenny.
Your beauty betrays you.
What other woman has hair of
fine-spun gold thread
and long-lashed eyes of sapphire perfection?

Visible through white silk, your ******* and hips
lure me towards golden-freckled alabaster arms.

I’ve known your name all my life.
Now I meet you, smiling shyly as you bathe.

You’ll not get me, water spirit.

They say you wait
in wind-wild streams and lonely pools
for weaker souls than I
to surrender to your enchantment.

You beckon lovers in
to greet your body; to love you.

They say you
coil weeds around hopeful lovers’ ankles and pull them
down, white cold, into black depths.
You show their drowning eyes
the hideous crone you really are: Jenny Green Teeth.

But I see no crone, only youthful perfection
radiant in high sun’s glory.

Oh Jenny, your beauty and smile draw me.
Will you take me? Love me? Drown me?
Let us speak in whispers. Touch our fingers. Lips?

I cannot believe what they say. I cannot. I do not.

The water … so cold.