Short Story Week: Day Seven -The Siren

Ginny encouraged me to include a poem in this week of stories, and I had two long gestating ideas to pull from; The Siren was the one I was more attached to.

From what I understand, most poetry aficionados tend to think of free verse as the superior form of poetry over light verse. I resentfully disagree. I can accept that when free verse is done well, it can capture an emotional atmosphere that most light verse is too anchored in rhyme and meter to achieve.

With that said, I can barely STAND free verse poetry (e.e. cummings excluded). I find it so utterly boring and lazy. Now, I realize that's an overgeneralization, and I don't think I would feel this strongly about it if I hadn't heard and read so much negativity towards poets who carefully piece their syllables together. I guess in my experience, I find rhyming verse significantly harder to do than free verse, and I have yet to read a more beautiful poem than Lewis Carroll's 'The White Knight's Song'.

So ranting aside, my muses demand that my poems rhyme or have a damn good reason not to. What follows is a string of lyrics set to a Loreena McKennitt styled song that only exists in my head (and BOY is it in the foreground).

The Siren

The siren watched the ships above

Their drunken strumming seaward sound

With hopes of spree and majesty

To carry them to shores unbound

Sailing

Unveiling

The rolling waves and dousing graves

Where men have rightly drowned.

She surfaced by the coastal sand

The ripples danced in sunlight's glow

When there she saw a fisherman

And sang, "There's beauty down below

In the place where haven seems.

Would you like a dozen dreams

From the home where lonely currents underlie?"

Swim underwater

Where the grace of few

Sends splashes through the glade

My Maremater

Is embracing you

No need to feel afraid.

Unearthly wonders to behold

And tales are begging to be told

And you can hear eternal voices in the sky.

The siren smiled, a gaze prolong

She offered him a serous hand.

The fisherman ignored the song.

He kept his feet on barren land.

And she sang a soft reprise

To the beating of the seas

"Is the world so full of nectar when it's dry?"

Swim underwater

Where the ground is fane

And the breeze is trickled bliss.

I am the daughter

Of the bounding main.

My promise is my kiss.

I'll keep you safe with Neptune's breath

And let you skim the edge of death

Please trust your fear of siren song has been a lie.

Thirty years, the ebbing tide

Has painted pages on the shore

A young man sets his nets aside

And dreams where beauty sang before

Waiting

And hating

The call of past that couldn't last

And won't come anymore.