Winged Dryad

[Death of a Mermaid image from the internet

posted for Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads Picture Prompt Friday
Reposted for Poets United's Poetry Pantry February 2, 2014] 

She bursts out of the sea

a winged dryad
in the foam,
her gown
all the colors
of the ocean
that's her home.

Seahorses
cascading

from her
seaweed-laden hair,

she rides waves
outlined in beauty
 by the luminescence

there.

Her home is a cavern

below the coral reefs,

her bed a captain's cabin

in a ship that never sleeps.

She dines daintily with  whales,

plankton and krill from their baleen,

a shared feast of tiny edibles

 on leaves

of darkest green.

When lungs grow tight

that's when you'll see her,

looking like a wave,

her wings

faintly visible,
face beautiful
and grave.

She flings herself onto the rocks,

draws back

in sinuous dance,

under a silvery midnight sky,

her mournful song

perchance

remembering

 a time Before
that stopped too soon,
and she wont be back
until the next
full moon.

She sails away
 on a ghost ship
with an emerald-laden mast.
As the golden sunset
takes her in,

she slips into
the past.