Backyard Mermaids is a memoir poem. It relates a memory of one of the summer experiences I had with two of my first cousins at the home of my maternal grandparents. My cousins lived on one side of my grandparents’ house. We spent lots of vacation days together—running through the lawn sprinkler, picking vegetables in my grandfather’s garden, playing dress-up in the basement, meeting in our clubhouse under my grandparents’ front porch.
BACKYARD MERMAIDS
An August afternoon,
the air hangs over us like a moist veil.
A cicada stings the silence.
Dzidzi turns on the sprinkler.
Thin ribbons of silver beads
stream upward, glisten in the sun.
We run back and forth through the tiny waterfall,
our bare feet squishing through wet grass,
liquid diamonds cooling our sunburned skin,
seaweed hair clinging to our heads and necks.
We are mermaids of the deep
and the sun, a giant topaz,
floats above us in a sea of sapphire
blue.
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Violet Nesdoly has the Poetry FridayRoundup this week.