Vision

I

Peripherally, I have seen her behind, combing through the blacktop's ocean,

visceral with gravel, pebbles turned to stone statues
of sailors. I have seen the tar mermaid--silken, sweating,
glisten with euphoria and bask in street lights bare.

She moves with the fluidity of forgetting, the soft fading flow of nepenthe.

The wood are gone; confined.
and I am overcome.

II

sunlight doesn't dash and frame you beautiful, caught in the corn, splashing
through our naivetés.  You bring the light and crash across my eyes.  Never
have I seen the green stalks part and bow low before
anyone. And I am bumbling and sloppy and earnest.
I have never kissed before.  Never breathed before.

II

Of course, there is nothing new along this speckled path. The disco-
ball-sun cannot shine and show the shown, and the sway of bowed corn-stalks
can play tricks on the eye. There is nothing new in the knife edge autumn air, nor
the blue above. The ground is trampled and deadened brown with boot-prints.  Of
course, boldly going has gone and went before. Love is a cheap whore.

III

I am appropriately cynical and know that I should be appropriately cynical:
a white horse sporting a Turritella horn is not. Mermaids aren't.  Ever after isn't
                 when I close my eyes. But I have seen her, peripherally,
blindingly dappling the green, and soothing her breath-tossed  hair.  And I
have given chase to truth disguised in fantasy.