by Anna Jackson 

Winner of the Barns Award for Excellence in Poetry

A gentle girl in swirling skirts – the Sea

Dances a mazurka with the moon

Dressed in azure, trimmed in lace-like foam

Which brushes softly on the sandy shore.

But in the wind-tossed waves a monster starts

To rise, distorts the dance, and soon

Where once there was a girl a siren stalks.

The windborne whispers rise into a roar.

Now, the siren swallows up the earth

On which she stands, clawing out the sand

Underneath her feet. Ships cannot land.

The bestial sea roils in its mirth.

Then, suddenly becalmed, once more the Sea

Dances a mazurka with the moon.

Anna Jackson is a junior studying Philosophy and English.