On the shortest day
I take the longest run
between one jetty and the next
and back again
rest myself against the rump
of a dune
listen to the sea shanties of the waves
while a mermaid appears, rises above the waves
swinging her wild, wild hair
in the sun-drenched breeze
until spotting me she coyly slips
beneath the water.
The jetty wades a little deeper into the sea
to catch a glimpse.
On the shortest day I tell
the tallest tales.
Seven year olds will always ask, at some stage when you are least ready for it, the mermaid question.
Granddad, Tina asks me, how do mermaids go to the toilet?
While you are grappling with this one, they ask another, THE BIG KAHUNA of questions, usually in the car while you are driving them to or from some event:
Grandad, where would I be if you and grandma never got married?
It’s the sort of question you need to pull over the side of the road for, but I kept on driving, hoping an apt answer would ‘pop’ into my head. Where’s the Muse when you need her? Surely she’d good for things other than poetry.
I don’t know what you would have done? I mean, how do you answer a question like that? There’s an obvious answer but that might depress the hell out of her, Who wants to be confronted at that age with self obliteration? And there’s the ontological answer but she wouldn’t get it.
I thought I’d go with the mermaid answer. That’d be the easier of the two …. maybe.
John Malone 