for Gregory Dowling
Once I saw Black Angus in a pasture upstate
move like this, or on men’s shoulders a coffin,
jostling slightly, angular and deliberate,
unimpeded through the bitter green:
a gondola, warping through the salt emerald
and S-curve of the Grand Canal
obscure in its purpose, its draft lopsided,
moving by contraries, its carved oarlock a bole
for baleful owls to nest in, sex and death
surefooted amid the gentle slap and swelling,
behind a mask half-constraint, half-release, with
a button sewn on, past the lace and gilding,
to take in the mouth and so prevent speech,
pill of oblivion and the river to cross
—for these commuters on their zigzag reach
who feel the ferry’s trembling reverse,
the furious churning, the hawser deftly tossed
around a bollard, boom of steel on steel
and snapping taut, making a puff of hemp dust
that gradually sifts down on the gunwale,
that sags, then shudders, expressing water.
The green widens; the ferry is away.
I scoop some up in my palm to remember,
custodian of love’s catastrophe.