Mermaids

MERMAIDS

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

T.S. Eliot The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock

For all the many creatures that inhabit the oceans, there are nights when the moon being right, they come together at the reefs or in the privacy of the deep to fornicate and repopulate the seas. Even the humble polyps, the living coral in the warmer seas shed their eggs and sperm to find haphazard union on a drifting wave. The turtles, so shy of man and his shore, still shed their fear for one night and pull themselves up by instinct to love, bury their eggs and dash (as if a turtle could ever be said to 'dash', as haste is not part of that creature's nature).

So mermaids too, when of an age to feel the urge to need a human, his lips on hers and her rounded breasts cupped by his love, will for one night forget the dolphins' usual warning and head for the strands and secret coves along the southern coasts of England. Even the whales, will on this night guide them in. The fishermen will be waiting , as they always have and will do, to plant their seed and desire and watch sadly as the schools of mermaids, hair streaming , head back to some silent wreck or reef, to home.

The dolphins do not begrudge them this night. They have taught the mermaids all they know. A mermaids tender touch learnt far out at sea. She knows the delight of a dolphin, his leathery smoothness, so that when she raises her tail his ardour is raised and he leaps and twirls at the joy of it. Only he knows, of all sea creatures, the joy of her lips.

And so at dusk as the porpoise followed the crabbers and shrimpers home, the mermaids schooled and followed the whales shoreward where the beacon flashed to warn all sea creatures of the deadly shallows. How many of her friends, the whales, have been caught by the ebb and left beached and humiliated by their friend, the sea. Some kindly human may push them back or water their backs, but most die far from home.

Mermaid love is not a passing passion, a casual encounter. Each mermaid has a call and only one man can answer it. Sometimes the call will be unanswered because the man is still child. The child may hear it and delight in it, but cannot know it is for him. So for year after year, she comes in hope and returns in misery, her purses unfilled. But one day, when the boy is youth or man, he will hear her call on some cloudless, moonlit night and feel his heart pulse and leap.

Such a night is this. She all instinct and sea, and him all earth and desire but untutored.

The men wait in lines waiting for their call again, and upon hearing, strip naked in the wave and stand in the shallows. Then they see them. The schools of beauty all beating heart and tail. Some blonde, some dark, some small-breasted as girls, others more full, mature. Some have painted their lips with red coral, others octopus ink. She comes. 'Adam, you have come at last'. Her voice is like the sweetest siren harp. 'Come here, don't be shy'. She like him is young, her hair blond and curled that falls like a veil over her, a net to capture him. He may be innocent, but even in him some ancient knowledge of a woman's need bubbles up. Him all beating heart, ears zinging and the hum of love and desire coursing through him. He lies beside her in the foam.
She smiles at the knowledge that until this man falls into death, their connection will last, Neptune's gift to both. The next wave carries her onto him, so practiced. As the sky spins above and the earth below, their mutual cries reach back to her home, the reef. The dolphins leap.

'Goodbye sweet Adam'. She, all beauty and power, thrashes the ocean and to home. All along that strand, men young and old are crying from exhaustion and grief. You can never tell when a mermaid will call again.

The next night, the mermaid school returns offshore, and as if as one, lie on their backs and lift their tails to release their precious purses to the racing tide.