Little Wave

She is of water, a female element, a liminal creature,
cold-blooded, not quite fish, not quite human,
a little wave swimming free.

She was curious about the man who bathed in the waterfall,
where she loved to sing, a descant tinkling
above the splash and gush.

She fell in love with his earthiness, the way his feet were planted
firmly in soil, his alluring scent of bark and leaf,
so she sang her heart to him.

Their life is sweet, their children strong, but she misses the freedom
of eddy and current, the splash and gush—
and she was warned against their marriage.

Fearing she would not live to see her children grow,
she leaves an umbrella of hair on each pillow,
kisses them all and whispers adieu.

Kim M. Russell, 2nd December 2025

Undine by John William Waterhouse, 1872, found on Wikiart

On this first Tuesday in December, Lisa is our host for Poetics at the dVerse Poets Pub, with a creature feature that begins with revisiting some Poetics prompts from 2023 and 2024.

Lisa visited Wikipedia, found a list of Legendary Creatures by Type, was impressed by how many there are, and has given us a comprehensive list of them.

She has also shared excerpts from poems about a few of the creatures by Alfred Lord Tennyson (‘The Kraken’) and Nicole Cooley (‘Undine’), as well as , ‘The Suparṇākhyāna’, a poem about the Divine Bird, Garuda, believed to be from the late Vedic Period.

 Our challenge is to choose to: 1) write to any of the previous prompts; 2) go to the Wikipedia link and choose one of Legendary Creatures to write about; 3) create our own creatures using one (or more) of the Wiki categories; or 4) take a line from one of the excerpts and build a poem around it.

I chose a line from Nicole Cooley’s Poem, ‘Undine’ to build my poem around.

25 thoughts on “Little Wave”

  1. This is gorgeously rendered, Kim! I love the idea of a little wave swimming free. Especially this part; “She fell in love with his earthiness, the way his feet were planted firmly in soil.” Sigh 😍

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  4. This is truly a half water creature and a real ebb and flow with your words. There was a wonderful film made off the west coast of Ireland, I think called ‘Ondine’ as a fisherman trawls in a young woman from the sea, alive, not drowned.

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