Martin Willitts, Jr.

The Canoe

A canoe comes for me
in stillness before nightfall,
when darkness still hovers far away
over the drumlins
with its star-promises.

The canoe is silent.
A waterlily-boat,
seemingly waiting for me to enter
and paddle into silence.

Water whispers, a lapping sound,
a kitten tonguing milk from a flat saucer.
An interlude of tree frogs begins
high-pitch clicking for love
and intense longing. Fireflies start glow-blinking.

I enter the canoe cautiously, trying not to tilt it
as it rocks with my shifting weight;
motion ends
when I settle in, relax,
skimming the surface.

I do not care where the canoe will take me.
I trust it to take me into night’s arms;
all I have to do is relax,
let water carry me,
let shores disappear.
It never occurs to me
if this is what I want,
if this world wants me.

My days of needing rules
and a good sense of direction
no longer guide me.

When I drift like this,
allowing whatever to happen to me,
I don’t care what happens next.

Martin Willitts Jr edits the Comstock Review. Winner of the 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; 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), 24 full-length collections including Blue Light Award “The Temporary World.” His forthcoming “The Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji” will include all 36 color pictures. Five of the poems appeared in Willawaw Journal.