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leading her to water

tentative no more, she takes the plunge --

ecstasy in every toss of mane,

His calls unanswered, he must follow suit,

Though suited, he's ill-suited to the game.

she swims beside the boat:

the sea's afire, redolent of all who've swum before.

he rocks, and splashes, thrashing mightily around:

a dried fish who's lost the knack to swim --

she reminds him with a caudal whap!

then swoops to catch him ere he drowns.

she's hard, electric, and her eyes are large

enough to capture everything on film

her genes are freshly pressed and though her flesh is cold,

she fills the sea, he thinks,

her lateral line a G-spot meters long,

chatoyant and yet subtle as her actions bold.

his games a bore, she darts away, she sounds,

her passage rings an infrasonic note,

Mother Sea adpresses, welcomes to the fold,

the world of men's a chain but she's unbound.

failure on the books, his grants now on the wane,

he dreams about the one who got away.

The end

Previously published, in a slightly different form, in Chaos Butterfly, 1998.