Sea Girls

"Not gulls, girls." You frown, and you insist—

Between two languages, you work at words

(R's and L's, it's hard to get them right.)

We watch the heavens' flotsam: garbage-white

Above the island dump (just out of sight),

Dirty, common, greedy—only birds.

OK, I acquiesce, too tired to banter.

Somehow they're not the same, though. See, they rise

As though we glimpsed them through a torn disguise—

Spellbound maidens, wild in flight, forsaken—

Some metamorphosis that Ovid missed,

With their pale breasts, their almost human cries.

So maybe it is I who am mistaken;

But you have changed them. You are the enchanter.

A. E. Stallings