How do mermaids spend their leisure

when not to seamen granting pleasure?

In Neptune's kingdom join the court

or glide to some exotic port?

 

On glistening strands we find the trace

of their delicate foamy milkwhite lace.

They polish pebbles to use as jewels

with turtles as their crafting stools.

 

Freeing oysters from their pearls

thread them through hair in lovely whirls

admired in brilliant fishscale glass

unworried that their beauty pass.

 

They wander in their fluctuating

cool green sunlit captivating

Poseidonia  meadow garden

mutineers' skulls left there to pardon.

 

Build palaces adorned with shells

anemones, coral and sunk ships' bells,

with eviltempered moray eels

to snarl whenever a belltongue peals.

 

Keep rainbow fish as ornament

to gaze and make their hearts content

seahorse in tiny seaweed cages

and octopus for eightarmed pages.

 

Repose on spongy beds so soft

with man-of-war tentacles  hung aloft

protection from marauding shark

roving predators of the dark.

 

Sometimes count doubloons they find

in pirate chests been left behind.

Race with dolphins on the crest

of warmer seas towards the west.

 

Childlessness their only sorrow

they live with no thought for tomorrow.