Copyright © 1999 by William Mistele

I was having dessert with a lady who had been introduced to me by a couple who worked at Hickim air force base. This woman was a Wiccan priestess in a local coven. We were eating a hot fudge Sunday. The ice cream was in a big scoop in the center of an icy cold metal plate and hot fudge was laid out on the plate in a design of interlaced flowers. As we were devouring this, the woman was relating to me her adventures in different parts of the world.

I did not realize that this woman was also a remarkable medium. As I told her about different undines I had met, without any noticeable change in her appearance, she put aside her own consciousness and began speaking to me with Istiphul's voice. This is what the undine said.

The Undine

When I look at you through my eyes

You are wonderful to behold--

A man of power, masterful, and in charge.

But when I perceive you through human eyes

You are thin, wiry, balding, and shy.

No wonder women do not respect you.

Their minds deceive them and their senses do not lead them

To listen to the songs the seas have told--

Hot blood flowing in their lungs

Moist air set afire with the taste of passion,

Power dancing with desire.

But we elemental beings crave you as our lover

You go for the heart

You ask for all that I am

Your love nearly tears me apart

I can hold nothing back.

As you kiss me waves collide

In mid-ocean from separate storms

Exploding in white foam as we touch

But for human women it is not at all like this.

The hand that glides upon the skin

Does not beckon them.

I think they cling to identity excessively--

The light of the moon does not illuminate their darkness

And so their souls can not speak freely.

They feel not the electricity of the lightning storm

You release in me

Nor do they hear the consonants and vowels

Of waters crying aloud

Making love on all the beaches of the world

In the rapids, the streams, and the river's falls.

They know not the releasing arising from the ocean floor

Nor the sinking and letting go into the undertow

Nor the returning, the arching back in the wave's crest breaking

Its feathery tip translucent in the sunlight and sparkling in starlight.

Where can an undine go to share with a human soul these things?

The dark depths of the ocean trench,

The slippery touch of the jellyfish and the nautilus,

The caress of arctic cold,

Or the warmth of curling up on a tropical beach

Of a woman walking out of the sea naked and free

Drops of water anointing her skin.

Sailors handsome, rugged, strong, and bold

Perceive with acute vision

The winds, the tides, the wave's size, the seasons

And the clouds at dawn.

Brave are their hands upon the helm--

With compass and starry charts they master the dark

But in their eyes the blue green sea does not dream--

They are afraid of what they can not control.

But you are not as these.

In your soul waves roll five thousand miles

And magnetism flows between the poles

And when I kiss your lips

It is I who drown in your bliss.