Michele Bannister

Relic of the Journey

Child of uneasy interfaces;
night‐fire, a sudden sky
sister of wind and fury.

Endless arc over a shallow sea
and all the scatter of silver‐fast fish, flung out,
recircling, wide-eyed in welcome.

This world of rippling water is too warm.

Outward, in the long interplanetary distances
all my mother’s sisters call.

Michele Bannister calls the Pacific Rim home; she spends a lot of time traversing its ocean. Her poetry has appeared in Strange Horizons, Goblin Fruit, and other venues, and in the Here, We Cross anthology. This poem was inspired by a work in tektite and silver by Elise Matthesen.