Smut by the Sea

Take me down in a tidal pool; swimsuit

around my knees. "Skerries beg/ the seal's

bride," we once sang. I am Neptune's child: mute,

dark-eyed, insatiable. I sing the eel's

want, the urchin's need. I know of the sin

that can only be found under the moon,

down at ebb time's tide. Take me; make my chin

slick from your spray. Even sex-starved Neptune

found joy sitting on the sand and dreaming

of what lay below. We are all sex-starved.

Let the great, gray seal colony -- crying,

"lick me, lick me" -- cry. I love a myth carved

into shifting sand; obscure and far-flung.

I love the selkie's cock, the siren's tongue.