The Hudson River

For Andrew M. Vickery On days when the wind, like stubbled sky over the Hudson, creaks on a rusty hinge, mulls a blankness, a vacuumed space where the thought shrinks like a slug in a tin of saltwater. On days like this it's better to sleep, or mouth some pre-Socratic phrase till the bleakness becomes second nature, till words like bios makris* melt like cotton candy on your existential tongue. I go out for a walk along the river. Over there, New Jersey awaits its renaissance. A glance at open water is salvation, and the birds, whatever your temper, can always be watched, their splintered flight over the stumps of a long lost pier, like a sheaf of papers thrown to the wind. I'd rather not take up the pen today--- what would I write other than the days are getting longer and the month changes name? I am used to small redemption, a smile on a street corner leading to open vistas--- but some days sink mercury-like, closing the distance an eye can travel, winching your gut with the inching crank of Archimedes' screw. Out on the Hudson the Weehawken ferry struggles against the full tilt of a north wind. Sloppy waves batter the awkward tin tub's hull, seagulls spinning like ashes over the wake as it chugs its redundant journey from riverbank to riverbank and back. On days like this my mind repeats the pattern, like the needle howling against the blank edge of the phonograph, it lurches against itself. The river, a cut vein, drains into a vast blue where distant tankers float on a thin horizon, and the eye can rest, if only for a moment. Nothing widens like this emptiness over which we pass--- a light, expendable traffic. *life is long

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