Undine

Nicole Cooley

After she rose from the dark throat
of the sea, her voice, light
as a shell, calls along the water.
The fishermen wait on the shore
when she loosens her hair over wet white shoulders.
Their wives watch at the windows.

At dusk these women scrub supper fish
and set the frying pans to burn.
In their bowls of black wine
the men find Undine, arms open,
her body shearing through the ease of the dark.

She has come to land before.
She knows the urgency
of the fishermen's hands, that breath
in her ear. She leaves
an umbrella of hair on each pillow,
a shadow pale as a fish
in a cave of water. Then she will travel
through the night into the sea,
into a deeper retrospective blue,
her mouth seeking only her own name.