The Lighthouse Keeper and the Mermaid

 

 



One stormy, starless, Stygian night,

The lightkeeper sat beneath his light

Reading a tale in the warm watch-room,

Safe from wind and waves and gloom.

 

T'was a story of sailors long at sea,

Of fishwives, sirens, and green Selkies;

As the pages turned and the hours passed,

He heard the ocean tempest crash!

 

 

But with the dawn the wind died down,

The sea grass stilled, waves ceased to pound;

The keeper extinguished his yellow beam—

He fell asleep and dreamed a dream…

 

Into his slumbers swam a plump seal

With the face of a woman that looked so real,

He could not resist that briny coquette;

He tried to snare her in his net!

 

But she was slick and slipped away

To her home in the coral of a lonely cay;

The keeper followed her down, down, deep,

To her quiet, pelagic palace keep.

 

 

 

 

She fed him sandwiches of kelp and clams,

She offered him squid-cakes and seaweed jams!

She combed his beard with a coral sprig,

And then she danced a fishy jig!

 

"I'll marry you!" the lightkeeper said,

"To a pretty fishwife I shall be wed!"

The mermaid nodded, gave her tail a swish:

"Dear husband to be, then give me a kiss!"

 

But as they kissed at the bottom of the sea,

The keeper awoke from his reverie;

And found in his arms a less tempting pearl—

His big fat dog instead of the girl!

 

 

By Elinor DeWire

 

Excerpted from Lighthouse Victuals & Verse, 1996