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.