In this week’s poem, Ralph Stevens considers the strange timelessness of a photograph. I love the frozen-in-time details of the speaker’s children in a boat, rushing toward an island and the surreal suspension of seeming to exist both in and beyond this old image.

Now retired from a career teaching college English, Stevens lives in Ellsworth. He is the author of the collections “At Bunker Cove” (Moon Pie Press), “Things Haven’t Been the Same” (Finishing Line Press) and “Water under Snow” (Wipf and Stock: Resource Publications). Stevens is a regular contributor to the online journal Verse Virtual, and his poems have appeared in a variety of publications and on the radio programs “The Writer’s Almanac” and “Poems from Here.”

Poets, please note that submissions to Deep Water are open now and through the end of the year. Deep Water is especially eager to share poems by Black writers, writers of color, Indigenous writers, LGBTQ+ writers and other underrepresented voices. You’ll find a link to submit in the credits below.

The Photograph
By Ralph Stevens

In the distance the green hump
of an island, blue water
under the bow where my
children sit, laughing.
Salt spray flashes up and over,
into their bright faces.
But this is just a photograph,
trying to close the distance,
create a memory. It’s what
photographs are said to do.
We’ve been at sea for
years now, it seems.
I hold the picture,
talk to those children.
Did we,
I ask them,
ever make it
to that island?

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “The Photograph,” copyright 2024 by Ralph Stevens, appears by permission of the author. Submissions to Deep Water are open now and through the end of the year. For more information, go to mainewriters.org/deep-water.