Odyssey in the Small
Three men make ready to toss bobbed fishing lines that will pull their bodies up
to the waist in the Hudson even as it grasps from across the way the lowering sun.
Come, they come now from a balance on three feet of sand, too freshly landed
from another wavering shoreline to know much of this unnecessary language.
Just so many yards upriver from the born again walls and prickled wires
of Sing Sing, across from the want stones of the Palisades streaked cliffs,
where lies the infinite swim of yesterday’s sunny day.
Closer by, every mid-summer tree fails to hide
in the philosophies of uncontrolled vines.
Closer still, memory rides one after another of Apollo’s propulsions
as they kiss off from the moon’s slim gravity, saying turn away from the dust.
A long sentence of mallards lingers just beyond a cattail scrawl—
next season’s migration asleep inside blood’s passing cloud.
Back here, the body rides a slow metronome, the clicking of today’s
packed train. Where face after contoured face brims
with opaque anticipation. Out on the river, another sailboat releases
into what’s left of daylight. Chasing the other fluttering illusions of canvas
to where all those left behind will reappear. Where all those who left will be.
Cry love now, angels. Cry for a moment, unendurable love.
-Original publication Adirondack Review, 2019