by Martin Willitts Jr
A dream fish flounders in my arms,
light glints off its scales like Brahams’ Lullaby.
I throw it back into the memory lake,
but its weight still lying solidly in my arms
is my son at birth.
Trees dangle their fall leaves
as bait on fishing lines,
a mere loon’s cry from another shore.
I toss the fish. It arches, silver and yellow,
pierces the lake surface,
a directional arrow to home.
The fish and the loon were never here.
My son swims on his own.
Martin Willitts Jr is an editor for Comstock Review. He won 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, 2018; Editor’s Choice, Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, December 2020; 17th Annual Sejong Writing Competition, 2022. His 21 full-length collections include the Blue Light Award 2019, “The Temporary World”. His recent books are “Ethereal Flowers” (Shanti Arts Press, 2023); “Rain Followed Me Home” (Glass Lyre Press, 2023); and “Leaving Nothing Behind” (Fernwood Press, 2023); “The Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji” (Shanti Arts Press, 2024) and “All Beautiful Things Need Not Fly” (Silver Bowl Press, 2024)