NOT TO LEAP IN
m a r y   e l i z a b e t h   p a r k e r

In pockets of aching blue where Lake Michigan
does not freeze over, the water runs deep as coelacanths, waiting
for a fairy ice princess to teeter and fall in. So pretty,

a deep cool swimming beneath the far tables of ice,
the green, upturned sea-princess eye
searching the runes of waves caught in ice,

lampreys in ice like aspic,
the flex of fish, the print of anything
stopped as the water froze.

From The Sex Girl, © 1999 ~ publisher Urthona Press, Asheville, NC

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