Naiad

Many things have been said concerning the nymph Salmacis.

I have heard a story of a youth that glimpsed her through trees

and their leaves.

She sits on a grey boulder that is surrounded by a stream

(and when old women tell the story the water is cold and

when old men tell the story, the temperature is opposite).

Seeing her there, he says in a whisper,

"Should I pursue, knowing as I do

the danger posed by the lady of the water?

Even children have heard the stories;

of ambitious, amorous men who crept slowly

toward a certain curve in this murky stream,

only to find their feet affixed by reeds,

webs of weeds holding them tenderly and then

without a rain the stream rises higher and higher."

He chooses to ignore his imagined peril,

else there would be no tale. In daylight he approaches her.

When she sees him her eyes are like tomorrow's rain.

She laughs slightly. "I was just about to ask you,

my dear mortal, if it was the case that you were very brave

or very foolish, but with bells on your toes you would be less absurd."

He makes his decision quickly.

"Be that as it may, lady, still I pledge to you my steadfast hand.

As surely as my heart beats in this moment,

I will adore you until I am no more."

She lowers her chin and her eyes are lost in her hair.

In a spray, she whips her jaw forward and grins.

"That is a promise to which you will be held,"

she says. She kicks him in the stomach

and he hunches over. She shakes her head

and he is turned to stone. She pushes at him with her shoulders,

his petrified body rolls clumsily into the brook's path.

"Oh, you'll be the same forever? Such an oath,

though less terrifying than it would be if you could keep it.

Sleep now, and dream of storms."

The tale seems outrageous and in all honesty I would not believe it

myself, save that I have seen his face in the sand of a beach in Miami,

and years later in a low corner of the glass that holds my whiskey.