​Fata Morgana
published in The Blue Nib Literary Magazine, December 2018

I am lost on the Lake
deliberately at sea
tossing about in moody waves

raging in storms of fictive selves
struggling for a
critical angle

ebbing in the middle of my life
suffering from erratic life sources
changes in speed and direction

not steadfast
vanishing occasionally
absconding on the horizon haze

a fata morgana
my light passing
obliquely through

the illusions of
blazing beginnings
and conjured endings

casting about and reeling in
before I come
to naught

dispersed and scattered
unable to gauge
apparent height

remembrances so heartrendingly raw
my breath catches
I choke on

my small eternity
an infinitesimal blip
on a temporary horizon

in the presence of so much
unproven promise
an untamable energy

unconcerned with time
remembering delivers me
while the island on those far shores

evaporates
my forgetting
dismisses me

moments disintegrate
their traces lost
taking everything

​in the end.
​
* Inspired by West Sister, an island in Lake Erie, that can be seen from the shore occasionally because of the refraction of light

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