Evenire, by Ann Power

Mermaid Netsuke. Purchased and photographed by the poet.

​Evenire 
 
From her watery garden,
from a green garble of weeds, 
she emerges in delicate lines of boxwood, 
oriental grace, frozen in happy acrobatics,
caught for a moment as though wheeling 
through liquid depths.
 
Her agile body, half woman, half fish, forms a 
fantastic ‘O’ in polished wood, as if to invite entrance to
her enchanted treasury of sea silk and sand dollars, 
of colorful undulating anemone, and finny creatures 
staring with unexpressive eyes as they dart in and out
through castles of coral reefs. 
 
Trapped in the nets of morning, of evening,
comfortable with fantasy and reality,
suspended as she is out of the flux and 
flow of ocean’s currents, 
happy in indifference,
her long hair winding her body in soft glistening locks,
she spins fantastic possibilities enmeshed in seamless 
transition like a yesterday that found tomorrow in the same 
shared hour, spackled by the iridescent scales of dream.
 
Ann Power

Ann Power is a retired faculty member from The University of Alabama where she worked as coordinator for the Bibliographic Instruction Program, University Libraries.  She enjoys writing historical sketches as well as poems based in the kingdoms of magical realism. Her work has appeared in: The Pacific Review (CSU, San Bernardino), The Puckerbrush Review, Limestone, Spillway, The Birmingham Poetry Review, The American Poetry Journal, Dappled Things, Caveat Lector, The Copperfield Review, The Ekphrastic Review, and elsewhere.