Those pesky barnacles

“A Mermaid” (1900), by John William Waterhouse

“It was a Maine lobster town —-

each morning boatloads of hands
pushed off for granite
quarries on the islands….


”One night you dreamed
you were a mermaid clinging to a wharf-pile,
and trying to pull
off the barnacles with your hands.’’

— From “Water,’’ by Robert Lowell (1917-1977)