The mermaid of the Least Coast (East Coast) tells tales all around the Norfolk Broads and goes in search of her birthing Broad. Poetry and prose merge in many tales at the flick of a fin (or tail). But where does phantasmagorical end and real life begin? Worth reading for the many tales retold in modern verse and prose.
Fully revised (2023) with tales added, to complete each tail. Find mermaid themes in many of Webb's poems... but they are nothing like the modern cartoonish versions we have seen.
For more mermaid research, find the Sheringham Mermaid and many other carvings in churches around the country.
Excerpt from A Mermaid's tale (1:)
There is a mermaid of the cold North Sea
that seasons to the past of tides that free
her neverwhere, so she may walk on land
and in that magic place her two feet stand.
She goes there every holiday to paddle
and leave her duck flesh where it cannot waddle
beyond the ugly farmyard of her hell,
for splashing on the shore, she feels quite well.
She sings her driftwood into waves of sound
that chatter like dull sparrows, all around,
where she is dun as every other duck
that lives at home without the need for books.
Lost into make-believe she drifts away
and nothing visible, but fat, will stray
beyond that bright tomorrow’s colour plates
where her soul lives and breathes, and eats and waits.
Until that time of year when counting stops,
as hours beached to wade, in belly-flops
of mermaid-floating, streaming into light
as Ariel’s refreshing voice, insight
beyond that land-locked farmyard full of noise
of games and queues for every other’s toys.
They all belong, but all are neverwheres
that silence her loud voice at tables, chairs,
for she cries in deep tones too hard to hear
so they can’t see her Cheshire-smiling fear.
She does not know what prince could break her spell,
for she’s a mermaid banished into hell.
Dry land is painful for her flapping feet
that strain and kick her gasping into leap,
where she can swim all day, that floats her dark
beyond the nightingale and morning lark.
She flushes to the games she cannot play,
but clocks and ladders tumble her away
from suits that court a queen to paint the flowers
in rows on rows of roses’ fading hours.
The Lost Boys sleep in nursery-red glow
that never dims its peace, to overflow
into the present hags of endless news
that none can silence and that none can choose.
Grief bleeds its newsprint endlessly, to chill
Grieve not for all that waste, the flowing tide
where limbs still swim and bones lie bare to hide.
The Lost Girls may find Peter, if they wish
when they’re hydrogenous as swimming fish.
A Wendy billows, bird-struck, floats to die
within a home, plucked where dull feathers lie.
Leave feline ghosting voice behind, before
each lock and handle, chain or open door.
It Cheshires in the ether’s sunset fall,
remembering a cat that climbed bare wall.
Sit in a meadow, with no need for legs,
then pull stemmed dandelions to doll-like pegs;
blow wisps of featherlight away, along
the first and last notes of a mermaid’s song.
She floats away in air, just like the sea
and brushes places to eternity,
beyond each present moment into past
which sings forever and will now outlast
the demolition of those endless bricks:
like playing, tumbling cards or floating sticks.
She brooks a stickleback to bubble fresh
within a vanished haunt or fishing mesh.
Her hell was levelled musk, then it arose
in vivid jewels that gleamed in water flows
of Ariel, enchanted into light
of air and sea’s horizons, newly bright.
Stare at the plastic doll-face, glazing long
beyond all family life where joys belong,
and do not ask the mermaid’s shedding tear
if there’s a place to hear her anywhere.
She haunts the vestiges of sunset/dawn
and morning greys her lost and still forlorn.
She laughs too loud, too late to join the dance
in youthful hearts’ slow dawdling into prance,
where moments pass their hours beyond dull thought
and purchase silver coins that can’t be bought.
She’s foiled in dumps of treasure that can’t sell
their cheer to make her gleaming moonbeams well.
She’s as at-sea as sailors, drowned too deep
for pearls to eye dominions where fish leap.
Smothered into silence of fair waves,
each changing tide laps, as her soul bereaves.
