On the Hudson brash ice
rafted and hummocked a tumult
of fragments.
I press my forehead to the glass
windows and watch.
In a fracture,
a merganser paddles into flight,
wings flapping white against open
water.
Plates of ice resemble
the texture of human skin
magnified, grey
under a grey sky.
A black smear
mars the ice, stirs.
black wings bear
the ponderous bird aloft
he banks
revealing
bald head, tail.
Past the platform and parking meters
perched on a fractured ridge
He clasps the crag
with crooked hands.
Beyond, an eddy of
eagles
swirls
disturbed at the
approach
of the train.
In the empty slips
at the marina,
a bufflehead dives,
bobs to the
surface.
Across the water
the Palisades rise,
columnar
their roots in the
river.
Each small beauty I
see
through your eyes.
You ride with me,
south
then west. I travel
to meet your death.
[Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Eagle]
photograph: my mother and aunt at Limantour Beach, Point Reyes, CA, 2009
-from The Taste of Death, by Gail
ReplyDeleteBut what the grownups did not say when they spoke reluctantly of Death, citing the finished lives of neon tetras, our black spaniel Laddie, a barnyard cat—what they did not point out was how many deaths we die while we still live...
...The deaths come more frequently now, and with greater passion. The unfoldment goes on, with or without names, and sometimes without feast or famine. Rehearsals now for the real thing? The constance of evolving? Who knows? Only the dead, and they do not speak of it.
Jeny
ReplyDeleteHudson River Line, Southbound
The images passing your window progress from sharp and cold to dark and weighty--reflections beyond the glass or from within remains unspoken.
And then! An eddy of eagles! (What a wonderful way to express them.) Auspicious in any culture and precisely timed in your lines, though not by you the poet. By them--as they made their simultaneous entrance and exit, to etch their classic symbolism forever in your mind at the advent of your last journey to Gail.