Michael And The Mermaid Poem by Michael Pruchnicki

Medusa was the mermaid's name.
She'd come swimming alongside the boat
Michael was sitting in. He was nursing a can
of Bud when the mermaid suddenly appeared,
breasting the crest of a wave. She was blonde
and had freckles from the tip of her nose
to the mounds of her elegant breasts.
Michael thought then that she was the loveliest
creature he had ever seen, or expected to see
if he lived to be a hundred. Even the glistening
green scales that covered her sleek bottom
and the fins that he could just make out
in the swirling water took his breath away.
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She said her name was Medusa, a mermaid true,
who belonged to an undersea clan called Merrow.

With webs between her fingers and eyes light blue,
a tail flowing nimbly behind like a bejeweled stalk -
Michael's heart beat faster and he gaped, amazed!

He said, 'Would you come aboard my boat?
We could talk about a mermaid and her man
named Michael. We may differ in our anatomy,
but we likely have souls that will cling together! '

Medusa uttered words in sea-maid's music
to relate how mermaids linger in waters,
wreathed with green seaweed,
and seldom come ashore.

'We are warm-blooded women
from the waist up;
but we are also fish,
and we need,
from the pelvis down,
water to live and flourish ashore -

'When the wind blows back
the unruly waves that surge,
you may see me again, macushla,
and together our spirits shall soar! '

Medusa was her name,
and though Michael lived to love another,
he often walked the beach,
longing to hear her call - 'Macushla! '
.