One night I boarded the Hutch,
                                                  rumbled out toward the shoals,
how the smooth narra
                                   glided through the rogue waves.

I nightrigged and weighed anchor under then bridge,
I glimpsed the underside of the scansion
                                                                 trembling;

the cables we’re lightstruck
                                             because of the lumbering diesels.
I shut down the engine:
                                       I let the boat drift:
                                                                     I let memory list.

It was as if someone pulled up the centerboard of my mind
those diesels and the shore lights refracted,

I thought maybe that’s just it in the river.

I thought
                what of the freighters from Liberia and Lithuania,
what of
             the sailors with their elbows on the rails,

eyeing the narrows
                                after days on the open sea.

A crest of promise, a slatch of debris.

And underneath me a murmur as fervent and futile
as the backwash
                               of those big boats.

I wear waders and scout the shorelines,
I bump my shin on rock and snag my skin on brush.

Part of me will always be the same.

It’s as undecipherable as the sough of the wake
until you let the water slide to your waist and heart,

until you’re working in the river so long you know.