Mermaid – Janet Barkhouse

Mermaid

She seeks songs hidden among rocks
on Fundy shore, finds periwinkles

silent in tidal pools. Her cold fingers
pluck a rusty tin can from the sea,

fill it with winkles and water. Tail
slippery as eelgrass, eyes drowned

with knowing, at earth’s edge
she conjures up needfire, settles her catch

in its heart. When driftwood transmutes
to purple smoke, water to silver fog,

rhythm of ocean will thrum in her throat,
salt fires dance on her tongue.

Janet Barkhouse started writing poems in 2006; since then poetry has taken her once to Sfakia, twice to Banff, and many times to Halifax (she lives on Nova Scotia’s South Shore). CV2, Riddle Fence, the Nashwaak and Dalhousie Reviews, and the LRC have shared her work.