Boy Dreams
Poem
by M Forrest
I was a Merman once.
In the gloom of the amber-tinted seas,
With the brown tang clinging about my knees,
With a coral house, and a crab to ride,
Who pranced, and who ambled from side to side;
I wooed a Mermaid with emerald hair,
Dragged the fierce sea-serpent from out his lair,
With his flaming tongue and his awful might,
And I slew him—easy—in open fight!
I had strings of pearls, white as frozen milk,
That were strung for me on sea-spider’s silk;
And I never pined for the upper skies,
Whose blue came down in the dead men’s eyes,
Drowned men with the salt on their blackened lips,
Who slid, drifting in, from the wrecks of ships;
But I took the gold from the belts of all,
To pave the road to my coral hall.