Walking on Water

I met Mike Everhart on Saturday, purchased his “Oceans of Kansas” book, visited his website.

All of this thinking about Kansas oceans brought to mind a poem that I wrote five or six years ago…

WALKING ON WATER

When he was young,
my brother, with his blond head
bent toward the earth, searched for sharks’ teeth
and gold-gray rocks embossed with fossils.

Sea turtles and sharks
once swam the ocean of Kansas,
leaving their stories in books of stone.

I never really thought, till now,
of walking on the ocean floor, water
way above my head. Yet as I breathe,
the land billows and I drift
with the undulating sod.

Above the knotted grass,
a summer sky reflects the phantom sea,
where white clouds roll like waves,
haunting an invisible shore.