The view from here is the border:
the lake, close-up, is vertical.
Not so much water as law and order.

The word for it might disappear,
the road run through its invisible wall.
The view from here is the border

vanishing around an otter, 
swallows, tractor, trailer and damsel- 
fly, not so much law as a stretch of water.

Mind your footing on its thin air.
There's the fault whose tremor you feel.
The view from here is a border

gone over and over, a fact of nature,
an impression that's begun to snowball,
not so much water as law and order,

a wavering queue, a detention centre,
a dotted line turned block and fractal:
the view from here is the border,
law and order written on water.

Gallery Press launches John McAuliffe’s The Way In, from which this poem is taken, at Listowel Writers’ Week