Love Song

Oh Prufrock,
you never really listened.  Did you ever think,
to wonder
all those days in parlors with your coffee spoons and peaches
if maybe one of those lovely sirens just

out of reach,
may have had a few silver strands in her flowing hair?
(We don’t get much Clairol down here.)
Maybe a few deep laugh lines beside her eyes?
One or two (a gentlemen doesn’t ask) extra pounds from loving
to enjoy skittering crab claws a few too many?

No, you always look to the young mermaids,
those still so new girls
who want to sing to men with fire
still in their souls.  They want the ones who leap first,
the strongest,
the ones who fight hardest to swim back.
All those young men ever talk about is themselves, (or their cars,)
once we catch them.
No wonder we drown them after one single breath of sea.

For me, I could sing, sweetly,
for a man with a few regrets.
A lost love, a missed chance.
Perhaps a failed dream.
Someone who remembers older songs.
A little Classic Rock, perhaps.

I might even find a reason to teach you how to swim
how to breathe a different breath.   To remember
lungs that filled with fluid and did not die,
to live another life beneath the sea.

Human voices are not always the ones to seek.

KAW Jan 13