Lake Erie by Cole McInerney

The tide rises,
suggesting the season,
stealing the stairs.
I sit in competition
with the horizon,
wondering which of us
blinks first.
Remembering the anniversary
of my grandmother’s death
to be eight or nine years ago,
yesterday.
On that last day
she struggled out of bed,
laughing at the difficulty.
My grandfather
helped the tanker ships
retire from the lake,
until the ice breaks.

The tide recedes,
suggesting the season,
returning the stairs.
I think of you
rather than sleep,
ignoring my eyes
and the moth at the screen.
A stranger with your voice
laughs on the beach,
staggering into the water,
hurrying back out.
Eventually I dream,
within it you write to me.
In the caverns of the fantasy,
the landscape blinked.
The light at its farthest reach
sank into the sea,
and we laughed at the difficulty.

Source: The author, 2021

Cole McInerney is a poet from Niagara Falls, Ontario. He studied English at Toronto Metropolitan University. Currently, he is a MFA student at the University of South Carolina, studying poetry. His poems have been published in several print and online publications, including Feral Poetry, White Wall Review, The Bookends Review, and Echolocation Magazine.

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See all of Cole McInerney’s poems on the Niagara Falls Poetry Project website:

•     The Buildings of the Dream
•     Convenient Corner
•     Lake Erie
•     Russell Street