Summer's Haunt

Passion and gold dust break out of the sea

We two on our atoll’s windward strands

My girl makes high work of shoulders and hands

A lookout, main mast, a crow’s nest of me

Sky touches sea ‘round, with naught to seize on.

And she high up my neck, no ghost ship spied

Foam mermaids were swallowed, a sea witch scried

She slid off my back, a sybarites frisson

Broken bottle blue lifts the toile de jouy

She shook again, skin blue as a wave be

“The witch said I would be swallowed tonight

‘A man would pour me and drink me away.

‘Mermaid of foam and none to save me.”

She made no move to set the dress a-right.