The Mermaid and the Fisherman
by
Matt Zurbo
The beautiful mermaid sung
a delicious, mighty note.
Up through the calm depths, to a wild storm
that note did spiral and float.
Three fishermen working hard at sea
hearing her siren’s call,
turned up their radio up loud
and made a point to snore.
“Sorry, Miss,” they said,
when they headed back for shore,
“We’d rather not be dead,
and live with the fact we’re bores.”
But the mermaid, determined
that their fate had just been stalled,
swam beneath their town’s plumbing
and called and called and called.
“It’s not that I’m being greedy,” it purred.
“One of you will do.
“Why not try drawing straws,
“if that makes it easier on you…”
The fishermen took to armour
made of whatever they could find.
When people asked if they were okay,
they’d lie: “Actually, we’re quite fine.”
Next, the mermaid whispered
her song into some soapy bubbles,
she then blew the fishermen’s’ way
just to cause them trouble.
Around a diner table, at a market,
even visiting old Nan,
the fishermen would hear her siren’s call
and go quite mad again.
One of them ran away
to Egypt, dry and deserted,
another died of thirst
when all water he rejected.
The third fisherman, however,
built a mote around his house,
only six inches deep,
so a deal could be nutted out.
Instead, the mermaid sent her friend,
not as pretty or so sweet,
a rock crab in her place,
that bit him on his feet.
Soon a battle erupted,
between the fisherman and sea creatures,
which broke the mermaid’s heart
into tiny little pieces.
All she wanted was to be loved,
to drift into sweet romance,
but the fisherman waited too long,
she fell for a pirate called Lance.
Together the pirate and the mermaid
sailed the seven seas,
the news of this bringing
the last fisherman down on grubby knees.
He had been scared and cautious,
a humble working fisherman.
Adventure was usually for rich folk,
born from mighty clans.
He went about his life,
made new fisherfriends,
straining, listening, every trip to sea,
but the mermaid never called again…
The End
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