365 Days of the Poet: Petal 12, "Siren Truth"
Lunch break: the Chicago River, where I was reminded of these lines...
Vanya: (to Elena) Why are you so down? Come, my dearest, my beauty, be sensible! The blood of a mermaid runs in your veins. Oh, won't you let yourself be one? Give free rein to your nature for once in your life; fall head over heels in love with some other water sprite and plunge down head first into a deep pool, so that the Herr Professor and all of us just throw up our hands.
~ from "Uncle Vanya" by Anton Chekhov
Some days
when the light is greened gold;
the color of witch's glass,
the river spreads its skirts
and shows her hidden cities.
There the world is
as it is here, yet more.
The light falls not in rays
but in scales that dance
like metal feathers in the wind.
Those cities call me,
they know me as one out of time
and out of place.
They smell my mermaid blood
and wonder at the dryness of me.
Some day soon I shall slip
out of my coat, out of my legs
and into the deep, wise waters.
Then they and I will know
my siren truth.
"A Mermaid" by John William Waterhouse