The Merman
by J. Marcus Weekley

             a response to Stevens

Two minds must one have in Summer:
To disregard the waves and the crash
Of the waves crested with significance;

To be hot one second,
While ignoring sea creatures born in blue
Chasms smooth in the nearby dim

Of a millennium’s darkness; and to feel
Every joy in the tides:
The silence of every frond,

Which isn’t the silence of the land,
Washed from different tides
Which roam from different nowheres.

The merman bears the waves,
And, everything his selves see,
Everything there and the nothing that isn’t.

J. Marcus Weekley was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, though he currently lives in Gulfport, Mississippi, and has lived in over seven states and three countries. He is also a photographer and a quilter, and his images accompany the essays of Gail Folkins in Texas Dance Halls: a Two-Step Circuit. Marcus' writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry International, versal, The Iowa Review, and Quick Fiction, among others. His self-published books include from four years and Look Out Below and Other Tales, among others. View more of his work at www.flickr.com/photos/whynottryitagain2.

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