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 edits the Comstock Review. Nominated for 17 Pushcart and 14 Best of the Net awards. Winner of the 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Award; Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, 2015, Editor’s Choice; Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, Artist’s Choice, 2016, Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, 2018; Editor’s Choice, Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, 2020. His 25 chapbooks include the Turtle Island Quarterly Editor’s Choice Award, “The Wire Fence Holding Back the World” (Flowstone Press, 2017), plus 21 full-length collections including the 2019 Blue Light Award “The Temporary World.” His new book is “All Wars Are the Same War” (FutureCycle Press, 2022).