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We sing on the cliffs, behind the hidden rocks. Those rocks, like fangs, barely troubling the surface. A secret maw. The waves don’t notice. We sing and you always come. If the sultry winds don’t blow your hard and salt-burned bodies to us, you will be drawn by music. Our seductive music. No human sings so well.

Come, come and wreck yourselves. We sit patient. We don’t go to you; no need.

Here, a whole ship of you. All pulling on oars together.
Pulling away past … away.
Not possible. Are you all deaf? Maybe. So we’ll climb on you ship. See us, see us. We are young and so pure and just what you want. You cannot resist. You are males.

And yet you pull away and away.

We are all over your ship, sliding, writhing, so perfect.

No!

How can a whole ship full of men resist us? Men, each cleaving to a single person to whom they are wedded? We are…

We slip from the gunwales. Back into the sea.

There is another kind of man.

We didn’t know.

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©Gary Bonn, 2018

Reference: Herbert James Draper: Ulysses and the Sirens