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.