Undine

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.