Mermaid

Day 6: RWP prompt was to look at a picture that you use for inspiration and use images and ideas from it in a poem. Wish I could scan the picture but am on the road. Will try to do it later...

Mermaid

If only I could be so focused.
Her long, tangled tresses
have the beautiful disarray
of brain synapses.
Her tail is a rippling lake
reflecting falling stars.
Her face glows with the gentle fierceness
Of creation
as she gazes at the baby in a bubble
floating between her cupped hands.

If only my light would shine like hers,
make even the murkiest of places
nothing to fear.
If only a rainbow garden grew
out of whatever I planted.

When I asked my parents how I was born
They said they prayed for a daughter.
If only that's all it took.
If only life could be conjured like poetry,
my power to create subject only
to my strength of purpose

and the promise of grace,
not the slipperiness of love.