I used to fish in San Francisco bay,

without a net, for love as well as food.

Out by the water, on a long, cool day,

I had a place to go, and some time to brood.

The only woman usually, I glued

my hands to the rod. Men left me alone; I enjoyed

those autumn days, till the day I was destroyed.

It started with a tentative tug, a touch confined

without a glance or the pressure of a hand.

Then it teased me like a simple, other mind

across my own, vibrating with command.

Then I almost fell, as she charged high, and fanned

open her tailfins, arching through the spray

of her own raging white wake. Don’t look away;

listen. I breathed, and she tore away the line,

and showed me her face—those empty eyes—beside

the dock. She howled, stretching her hand to mine,

floating her tail in the rocking of the tide

as she clung to the slippery post below. I tried

to look at her and saw that it was true.

What would you have done? I helped her through

the railing. Draped with clammy seaweed strands,

she wiggled her huge shoulders down and lay

flopping along the pier, with her open hands

still held towards me. Now I know that was the day

I lost my mind. She’s followed me the way

a beggar could haunt a doorway. She’s in my shade

whenever I feel empty or afraid.

Look at her now; by now she’s growing old.

We hear her every night, that singing, through

the heartless air, carried on the cold

enchantment of the California dew,

futile and endless notes, a wordless clue

poured out over the deafened land. I wish,

sometimes, I’d thrown her back in like a fish,

when I saw her breasts. A mother! I still can’t say

if my fishing hook killed it, or if she

dropped it in the struggle, but of course it died that day.

And I know wherever it fell, there must be

a shrinking in the waves, the hissing sea,

a crust of sand still thickening on the edge

of its quiet bones.

From Eve