Water Sprite (Providence)

Who are you, Water Sprite of the Seekonk? Who made you, this full moon night of lilacs, like spring itself a-burst, made you leap from the bulrushes of the park lagoon, your bare shoulders wet from the limpid waters, your long hair sun-gold (bleached white in lunary light, but sun-gold nonetheless!)?

Who made you so irresistibly beautiful. your visage the sculpted dream of surrender, your eyes the blue of hyacinth, of lapus lazuli?

As I rode by on my bicycle at midnight, who made you run naked to greet me, then leap into a clutch of chameleon trees?

Who made your fleeing soundless, as your bare feet sought stealth of moss?

Who, as I followed, bicycle laid flat on the clover grass and forgotten, made shards of you dissolve, in dapple of moonlight, in fall of blossom, uncurling fern and peeping mushroom?

Who made your soft voice beckon me, leading me deeper in woods. Circling, to come at you above and behind the lagoon edge, I came confounded to a rock at the other edge of the pool?

Was it your voice that whispered, as ripples subsided from a sinking point:

Follow me if you dare. I can be yours: mad angel of your destiny. Chase me forever – but I will always elude you — always escape to the other surface of water, of mirrors. Yours and not yours at the same moment, I will run through your hands like mercury.

I wait. Nothing rises to the surface to breathe. No bubble breaks the glass sheen of mirrored water. The night sky no longer wavers. The moon above, and the moon reflected, are equally still.

I ride home slowly, inhale the languor of cherry, the braggart bloom of magnolia, the luxury of lilacs. Who could resist this moon, this Dionysian spring? It draws us, real and unreal, mortal and mythical, quickens the water to form you, draws your spirit to my substance, my solitude to your incompleteness.

Were you some runaway, an escapee from the nearby asylum? A teen boy in moon-madness, seized by a sudden urge to plunge naked into the willow-fringed water? Or were you truly spectral, Ariel’s cousin?

Shall I return to find you some other spring first-night? Or shall you seek me out, coalescing from rainstorm? Will you press through my window-screen, cooling my night-heat with your smooth pale skin? Will you caress me with the patient ardor of ocean, the murmur of brooks in my ear? Will I taste dew on your lips?  And will you one day, as we stand at lake’s edge, pull me downward, arms strong as river currents?

Weeks pass. I keep seeing you in others, but others are not you. No one possesses the lilac scent of your impossible hair. No sight matches the clear blue window of your eyes above me.