The River

I can hear the slow thump and thrash of a ship's propeller churning the dark and see the sheer black wall of a hull slide by, gathering the river in like a skirt, then releasing a train of wakes to run up banks and rock the calm. Solitary fishermen sit quietly in private vigils along the river's length. All night they stare into an absolving still and move between a mind's floating absence and the tip of a rod plumbed to depths beyond human. After the ship has passed they wait for the river to heal and mend the lesions in a tactile language. Down river a floodlit smoke stack rises like a spire out of the ruins of a factory. High above, a great wheeling dome of seagulls fleck a charcoal sky and smear noise across a vaulted quiet. A lifetime on I hear the discordant hymn, feel the menace of something moving shapeless below the reach of words and wait for the river to heal.