Beneath and Above

Once I lazed along the lakeshore
and let it cleanse my feet,
but it beckons, beckons
like ten thousand sirens
inviting me to the deep:
each with seven-fingered
seaweed hands
eager to stroke the cords in my neck.

How I longed to let them!
To die among their rocks and eely halls
dripping with glass,
To urge my fists beneath the gritty dregs
and embrace the pulsing magma's warmth.

And so I cuffed my wrists and ankles
to a knotted porch post a mile off:
yet I strained to bite free,
for not being of the water
made me solemnly weep.
That hopeless tickle I cannot
let lie, I scratched til blood dots blinked
and how I was determined, then,
to scrape the marrow clean.

No, no! I once denied
the caution of a mile––
once I let the tritones lure my thoughts
into their snare!
Now I keep the weight of continents between I
and they, and no longer sparks the joy
they gifted me there.