Burmese Mermaid

Burmese Mermaid
Burmese Pearl by Gerald Kelly

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Caught in the Gyre



William Butler Yeats accurately captured in words and poetic images the force of the deep ocean gyre (see previous post). I am not an especially strong swimmer by mermaid standards, so when I found myself in the cold Arctic waters off the coast of Norway recently in a widening gyre, it took all my strength to escape it.

The only way to escape the pull and fury of a gyre is to swim under it, and that is what I did. I swam almost straight down, several hundred feet at least, until I reached the ocean floor. Looking up through the miasma, I could see the gyre in the shape of an enormous funnel channeling the frigid aquamarine water, a tornado of water taking everything into itself.


Drawing on the power of my mind and ethereal body, I swam down and away from the gyre in a 5 mile semicircular path until I was finally free of it. I had been submerged for more than a day before surfacing again, in the Gulf of Finland's gentler waters. Seeking rest upon a rock, I tended to my skin and scales, injured by stones, shells, and swirling sand. My hair emerged tangled in long strands of green, red and brown seaweed.

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