The Mermaid

I drove Sophie to the beach yesterday, partly out of guilt because I haven't done so in months, and partly due to the extraordinary weather we've been having in southern California. Really spectacular days, people -- the kind where I wish that I were a surfer, a lag-about, a stoner, a -- well, never mind.

Here are some photos (I put my sunglasses on her for a moment to see if she noticed, and she did) -- Sophie, as usual, felt the pull of the ocean, her apparent home. It's difficult to walk with her, so strong is the pull toward the water, and when we did, she didn't seem to even feel how frigid the water was on our feet, the whoosh of it sparkling over and over.

And here's a poem from a book called The Fifty Minute Mermaid by the Irish poet Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill and translated by Paul Muldoon:

The Mermaid in the Hospital


She awoke
to find her fishtail
clean gone
but in the bed with her
were two long, cold thingammies.
You'd have though they were tangles of kelp
or collops of ham.


'They're no doubt
taking the piss,
it being New Year's Eve.
Half the staff legless
with drink
and the other half
playing pranks.
Still, this is taking it
a bit far.'
And with that she hurled
the two thingammies out of the room.


But here's the thing
she still doesn't get -
why she tumbled out after them
arse-over tip...
How she was connected
to those two thingammies
and how they were connected
to her.


It was the sister who gave her the wink
and let her know what was what.
'You have one leg attached to you there
and another one underneath that.
One leg, two legs...
A-one and a-two...
Now you have to learn 
what they can do.'


In the long months
that followed
I wonder if her heart fell
the way her arches fell
her instep arches.