The Mermaid of York
The wind-and sun-battered newsstand had pictures of the creature who shouldn’t exist, can’t exist but there she was...
The Mermaid of York
one o’clock:
west wind slips on silent shoes
whispers off to bed
possibly not in Heaven
but in my neighborhood all
is silent for an hour
At two o’clock
with an audible pop
her eastern sister rattles
over my roof in un-sensible shoes
hurls herself, a desperate thief
against my window pains, clatters
among remains
of a later-than-is-wise dinner party
on my patio
settles in to sing over and over
the one line from that song I can’t banish from my mind and she knows it:
“swimming in your veins
like a fish
in the sea”
By two-thirty, I am thinking again of the mermaid
The tabloid cover
on the wind-
and sun-battered newsstand
strewing itself like driftwood
across Short Sands Beach in York,
Maine had pictures–
not drawings but pictures, I tell you
of the creature
who shouldn’t
exist,
can’t exist but
there she was in lurid newsprint-blurry colors
printed from the eight-by-ten glossy
you can see the original
down at the York Museum of Atlantic Wonders
hanging beside a tightly-lidded mason jar filled
with her remains
But that’s not what keeps me awake
they first saw her, much alive
swimming
a childish face, they said, torso of a young girl,
oddly heavy in the breast for one so young
hair an unkempt mane, raucous
with North Atlantic kelp
and Krakenweed
her body’s lower half a North Atlantic Salmon and she
was still alive
and grotesque
and beautiful
A boy threw stones
at her, they say, gathering them one-by-one
like tourists plucking shells and sand-dollars
from white, white sand,
gathered and aimed and missed, aimed and missed, aimed and
hit
witnesses say she dove
disappeared with a porpoise’s stride
into North Atlantic breakers combed
pure
and white
and clean
two days later,
sky and sand and sea swept
clean by a down-east wind,
they found her
body
broken
and impossible
on clean white sand
But that’s not what keeps me awake
I went to the York Museum of Atlantic Wonders
later, when I could be alone
with her
stand before her cheap transparent casket
read the hand-printed label
see for myself the intricate magic
lacing a child’s body
to an iridescent-gone-pale Atlantic Salmon
Oh, she was real
she is still
so
real
But that’s not what keeps me awake
on nights when east wind
creeps through darkness pawing
window panes
stealing my sleep
and singing
not the graceful white curve of her clean white child-face
not the eyes staring from inside a jar into eternity
not the terrible knowledge such magic exists
No. What keeps me awake is this:
in the watery dark
on her bed of kelp does her mother reach
and not finding her there
wake and wish
she could brush her daughter’s hair from her cheek
once more.
Sean Downing, poet, musician, teaches high school English and Theater Arts in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. He can often be found in his woodshop, coaxing music from odd scraps of junk, or haunting the trout streams around southwest Colorado. If you see him, don't tell anyone: they're probably looking to get an honest day's work out of him.
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This poem is mesmerizing, beautiful, and so tragic. That last line strikes straight to the heart, through the sternum and into that central core. So glad Sean has found his way to Juke.
beautiful and haunting. thank you , Sean