BOATS AND ANCIENT RIVER GODS

All summer outside my

window the river traffic

glides by, great lakes tankers

 

laden with cement, bleeding

at the hull, 3-masted schooners

with dories trailing like orphans,

 

sailboats and yachts and boats

of every size and class —

all day the drawbridge yawns open

 

for maritime commerce

and pleasure and sport,

fishermen in oilers, pot-bellied

 

Hemingways commandeering                  

cigarette boats and catamarans

and pontoon boats festooned with

 

Italian Christmas lights and

mylar balloons bobbing

in the wind, flotillas

 

of kayaks, canoes, racing sculls,

rowboats and powerboats spilling

to the gunwales with bronze-skinned

 

buxom-bikinied mermaids, their

luxuriant hair waving, but

it’s the working boats that

 

grab me, the meat and potatoes

fellas, the gargantuan

barges hauling pyramids

 

of coal and scrap metal in silence,

pushing back the water in

a garland of brown foam,

 

the tugs churn and shudder against

the current, bringing tons of dark freight,

and on top of each heap sits

 

one sea gull, fat and lordly

like some ancient river god,

resplendent admiral of our fate,

 

 

our fear, comedians of

the waterways, philosophers

or the harbor, pompous poets

 

of the people they

stare down on,

dreaming our demise. 

 

We are their subjects, their slaves,

their minions, fated to

                                    await the coming disruption

 

when order will be restored

and they will once again

reclaim their right to ascension.