Gemstone. Italy. Mermaid.

The sun, the god, the eye of our skies.

Waves gnaw at the hull as the sailboat keels over.

If to free is to love, we are loved now in our deaths.

Our hands grapple with the mast, clash against the beam,

and we wrap around the sails, the white material harsh against

our faces as we plead with the wind and covet the land 

that was made for other men.

The sun, the god, never falls like we do,

never misses breath the way we can, the way we know

how sea glass loses its clarity slowly because

the ocean refuses to let go. Once you have something good

in the palm of your hand, you will want to look after it

like a child, like a god, who is the eye of our skies.

I wish, at this moment, for a different ending,

and so when two eyes appear behind the dark sheet of water,

I hold their gaze. I’m only a fisherman, I don't need to die like a hero.

An ending as tragic as this would imply that I was better than I am.

I plead with the bright enchanting eyes below the water, 

knowing that I may have met my demise the moment I looked at her.

And she comes to me, like a dream, through the dark.

Two glaring yellow eyes, like a fish: Mermaid. Siren.

Coral Hodges ‘24

I wrote this poem for an exercise in my creative writing class. The prompt was to take a short poem you had already written and study the etymological meanings of each word, then keep that in mind while you rewrite the poem. I tried to keep the plot similar to the original poem, while incorporating new words and images.