It could be a water snake,
rippling wriggle in the glass
of a mirroring landlocked lake

or the dorsal fin of a bass,
painted turtle or the black flank
of an otter cutting a lazy path

for the far shore’s grassy bank,
meandering, lost to the past,
swimming for its own sake

toward sunlit shallows. A map,
unfolding in the fan of its wake,
charts one small ship’s passage

through a harbor at daybreak
into an ocean’s vast expanse.

---

Kevin Burris lives in southern Illinois. His work has appeared previously in RockPaperPoem as well as in Poetry East, Southern Poetry Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, and many other publications. He has published two books of poems: The Happiest Day of My Life (FutureCycle Press, 2016) and Inside the Clock (Pine Row Press, 2023).

---