POEM

The Ferry from Ocracoke to Swan Quarter

Laughing gulls hover:

a story below,

their shadows slide

and crux across the deck

of the Silver Lake —

painted white by convicts

from the Hyde County camp —

bound over the slick-cam Pamlico, 

past a dredge-spoil island

where cormorants in black

frock coats congregate, exiled,

penitent, eyeing the ferry

with Calvinist reproach.

— Joseph Bathanti