Front Porch Review
A literary magazine for the young at heart and mind

That stairway hugging the bluff, that narrow beach,
those mini-whitecaps – all come back. The lake,
a giant azure mirror of the sky,
met the horizon with no ship or sail
between us and the solitary blue.
What I can’t recall are the words you said
or images of driftwood on the sand.
If we wore bathing suits, did we have towels?
No swimmers splashed, no lifeguards tanned in chairs.
We were alone, I’m certain, but if gulls
or ducks revolved and swooped down raucously,
if one fish bobbled belly-up near shore
like bait to snare them, I can’t say for sure.
In fact, the lakeside panorama was
so ghostly, so remote, that I can’t say
if you were really with me there that day
or I imagined you, a water sprite.

By James Reiss

James Reiss, pronounced Reese, pictured here holding a trophy from the Public Radio Exchange (PRX) for his reviews of indie radio productions in 2010, is, alas, a trompe l’oeil, a collection of pixels which create a visual illusion used to trick your eye into thinking he is a real person. His pixels recently got together and wrote a novel, When Yellow Leaves, now circulating among publishers and represented by a noted literary agent. His e-mail address: James Reiss