Tuesday Poem: Prayer

Prayer

Oh, let us turn
to the mermaid girl
who luxuriates
in the roiling surf,
the bikini clad girl
who wades right in
while the rest of us
shiver in sweatshirts,
our hoods up, avoiding
the October wind.

Watching her, we yearn
for our own two girls,
enchanted like this one,
Silkies who swam right
into our lives, and out again,
for whom cold and wet were
as good as warm.

Let us turn
to the way this
new one sang
to herself, how wild
and sturdy she was,
how we drank in her
loose-limbed reverie,
as the tide dressed her up
in a white lace gown .

How sweet to watch
her cavorting at water's
edge, to imagine the splash,
the pull, the water's slap,
to grow happily salty
and weedy, riding
on waves of memory.