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Waiting for the Ferry at Algiers
Point
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For Reggie who tells me about
the river |
By Lee Meitzen Grue
We have had a long time in the
dark,
looking at the moon in the water.
We see those distant lights not
moving.
We are waiting to get to the other
side.
This isn't an act of faith waiting
for the ferry in the dark,
listening to the hollow whistle
blow away the other side.
The ships come by; they glide over
the moon.
Ships are big and silent, their
power pushes
water that wets our feet, their
passing
sucks back barges rattling like
tin cans.
There is a man who guides the
ship,
but he like God has too much power
and passes us by.
Here she comes, running the black
water toward us,
her eyes lit with great happiness,
we can see small people inside;
she is wooden and built for us to
ride.
It is for us she is landing here,
her horses treading water.
She throws down wooden
skirt-boards,
rubs concrete, rubs pilings,
scratches her back on land.
Under her skin impatient horses
throb,
their greased pistons turning,
turning.
She seems anxious to get away;
We clamber on board afraid she
will leave without us.
A smell coils up from tarred rope
it catches our throats, uneasiness
lines our bellies.
We are cast off.
We rush to the side to watch cold
water churn.
We have come here all our
conventions in hand,
but the river is broad-hipped and
so deep.
We are afraid. A thin brown
run-off from our street
foams at the mouth of a dog insane
as two hundred feet deep.
We are wood floating between
steel,
and all we carry are pieces of
paper to throw on the waters,
a thin bread,
and the music of flutes to cast
upon the wind to land.
All that keeps us steady on the
river
is the eye of one man.
It is the captain who stands in
the dark above us,
his eye sweeping thin green bands.
His tight hand on the rein of wild
horses,
their hooves beating the water
beneath us.
He knows the current, corrects her
slide;
he crosses the ranges, moving from
light to light.
Alone he threads us through the
eye of the needle.
We are his sleepy children carried
along in the dark.
When we hear the skirt-boards
scrape,
when we know we are safely across,
we wake and our tinny voices beg:
Take us again.
Please, take us again.
We are land's children,
but we love your comforting hand
that steers us.
through this dangerous journey in
the dark.
* *
* * *
Source: French Quarter Poems (1979) Long Measure Press
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