Perfectly Safe

Tell your heart-keeper 

your beautiful desirable one 

tell her 

that I am not 

like the other girls

I am perfectly safe

I am the mouthful of whiskey

that you knock back for shock

causing you to cough 

maybe if you are lucky

I also warm the blood in your veins

to honey 

but there are easier and kinder ways 

to warm yourself

without climbing out from the close hold

of the quilts

most of us puppet 

through our lives of sleep

and don’t want to be brought

gasping to the surface 

of the water of life 

compare me

to the stories of sirens

singing the unwary 

into the slackness of rest

I won’t cradle you in my arms

I won’t murmur enchantments

I call the heart of you up 

out of the dark waters 

that I may smash it 

into wakefulness

I am only a femme fatale

in the literal sense

a disastrous 

woman.

Arthur Rackham, Rhinemaidens, from The Rhinegold & The Valkyrie (1910).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mermaid#/media/File:Rhinegold_and_the_Valkyries_p_072.jpg