Call me sailor before poet.
In sweet dark coves I shipwrecked,
crashed with a passion into her salt
and smooth sand body.
It was something in her hips, in the brown
motion and the swaying. Something
that drew me to the hollows of her,
my laughing wild girl.
Her singing calls me now from sleep.
Draws me back to the rocks, and the wet tongues
licking my footprints away. Kneeling in the ephemeral
shape of the shoreline, my eyes are filled with wind-whipped tears,
my mouth with the memory of dark hair tangled
between her siren lips and mine.
About the Author: Cory-Ellen Nadel is a writer and academic with an interest in folklore, fairy tales, and feminist literature.
Copyright © 2001 by Cory-Ellen Nadel. This poem may be not be reproduced in any form without the author’s express written permission.