Thoughts that found a maze of mermaid hair
Tangling in the tide’s green fall
Now fold their wings like bats and disappear
Into the attic of the skull.
We are not what we might be; what we are
...Outlaws all extrapolation
Beyond the interval of now and here:
White whales are gone with the white ocean.
-Sylvia Plath
(Painting by Ilya Yefimovich Repin)