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)