should I make a pot of coffee
lean full-footed into the afternoon?
wake up from a dream of water. in this dry August
the currents look oily, sluggish. we push
up and back this neck
swimming through liquid, heavy air
hoping at least it’s too thick for mayflies.
no decisions on the coffee. current reading
on the Van Duzen gage isn’t consistent.
is this a dream of vacation? me and the sleeping dogs
some lazy Sunday past remembered
replaying like river between the L&I and Harrods Creek
It’s one of those perfect nights the kind
some high-end tourist drinkery would
try and recreate in an overpriced cocktail —
one of those scimitar moons over perfect
layered sunset colors the railroad bridge all
back lit some holiday play scenery cut out
the sort of thing from an old movie. No
not too too hot one of those end of August
summer nights you remember
as all of them like those winters as a kid
when snow days were just perfect there is
no sunset so perfect no breeze so breezy
and the river is just picturesquely choppy
and then the moment changes and then
it becomes a memory in more brilliant colors
And here we linger battling the spleen and feet.
There are lessons in the lonely hours between moonset and morning,
a consistency in the tugs pushing barge loads up and down river.
It’s generally quiet here. That’s what I told
the homeless woman rocking herself on a wharf bench. I’m interactive she called out
imagining I’d ignore her. Did she know
I noticed her pissing behind a bush an hour earlier?
These details don’t matter. These unscheduled details don’t matter
this is where life is here swimming in wet thick air
instinct taking over like the fish we are
dodging West Nile mosquitoes and post-colonial depression.
