Fauntleroy Ferry
--after Cesar Vallejo’s “Black Stone Lying on a White Stone”
I will die in Puget Sound, near the shore of Vashon
on a day when the fog is backlit and supernatural,
I will die on the Fauntleroy Ferry
--and I tuck my ticket, as always, into my back pocket--
perhaps on a holiday, when the wooden benches are lonely,
the tables, their cup-holders waiting,
the vending machines emptied out.
It will be a holiday because today, setting down these lines
the pulse of the dryer comes up from the basement like the ferry’s rhythmic churning,
and I’m landlocked and nested, declining adventures,
anything, really, that’s too much of a risk or a gamble,
which is what I think of your riding your bike down San Thomas in rush hour.
My mind, like a God-hand, likes to pick you up, place you down
in your classroom, our driveway, an ambulance
whose machines beep along to your recovering vitals.
On the Fauntleroy Ferry, on the way to Vashon,
Erin Redfern is dead. First she became the scuff marks
on linoleum floors and the lingering scent of gum wrappers,
then the engine inhaled her like a heart calling back its spent blood.
She’s merged with the thrum, warp to the weft of wavelets and winds,
the cries of birds and voices of tourists who lean on the bow’s painted rails.
She’s the Expressway’s inhale as the lights go green,
the tick of the gears as you cycle away.
These are the witnesses: the grebe’s call,
the tumble of sleeves in the dark,
the burnished benches, the empty cup-holders,
and the bank of fog so bright I can’t look.
--after Cesar Vallejo’s “Black Stone Lying on a White Stone”
I will die in Puget Sound, near the shore of Vashon
on a day when the fog is backlit and supernatural,
I will die on the Fauntleroy Ferry
--and I tuck my ticket, as always, into my back pocket--
perhaps on a holiday, when the wooden benches are lonely,
the tables, their cup-holders waiting,
the vending machines emptied out.
It will be a holiday because today, setting down these lines
the pulse of the dryer comes up from the basement like the ferry’s rhythmic churning,
and I’m landlocked and nested, declining adventures,
anything, really, that’s too much of a risk or a gamble,
which is what I think of your riding your bike down San Thomas in rush hour.
My mind, like a God-hand, likes to pick you up, place you down
in your classroom, our driveway, an ambulance
whose machines beep along to your recovering vitals.
On the Fauntleroy Ferry, on the way to Vashon,
Erin Redfern is dead. First she became the scuff marks
on linoleum floors and the lingering scent of gum wrappers,
then the engine inhaled her like a heart calling back its spent blood.
She’s merged with the thrum, warp to the weft of wavelets and winds,
the cries of birds and voices of tourists who lean on the bow’s painted rails.
She’s the Expressway’s inhale as the lights go green,
the tick of the gears as you cycle away.
These are the witnesses: the grebe’s call,
the tumble of sleeves in the dark,
the burnished benches, the empty cup-holders,
and the bank of fog so bright I can’t look.
