WATER POLO

In the Basilica of Chlorine, light wobbles in patches on the walls.

Whatever way your wind blows, you can’t deny

it’s the most erotic thing in the world – a Baroque depiction

of Neptune triumphant, the Tritons

playfully sporting, Michelangelesque, part dolphin,

which makes sense because dolphins are erotic – cocks with flukes.

Even the Greeks knew them to be the most oversexed of animals,

knew a dolphin would on occasion try to rape a swimmer – hence such myths

as Arion and Dionysos carried away on the broad, droplet-beaded back of a cetacean.

Some people actively encourage it. Once a colleague

whispered darkly of a rumoured website on the subject. Always the curious one.

I tracked it down. No pictures thankfully, that would have been

too much. An essay. The descriptive details

on how to seduce your dolphin were quite disturbing. Apparently

they’re not fussy and up for anything. It just goes to show

there is nothing so perverted that someone won’t

turn it into a lifestyle (with its own website). In preference I think

I will turn my thoughts back to harmless wistful Whitman daydreams

of glancing, twisting limbs

and big hands towelling dry their muscular bodies.

First published in Takahē, August 2007.