Hudson River

If we take the train and the river widens to our left – winter-black, white curled caps, the Palisade cliff face and bare trees in bone wind. If we pass the bridge, the fort, plumes from the plant. If the water travels north with us, if at the same time it runs south, for fifty miles mixed like this – salt pushing up, snow melt pushing down to the harbor to bed the ocean tide. If we hike the mountain, if we stop for the view, storybook etched: the five-street town, the country road, and the train’s trail along the riverbank.

When we exhale
the water in our lungs transforms.
Singular breath, wood smoke.

Then in such field quiet we understand our alliance to that bay down south crowded with ghost ships and torch, elbowed skyscrapers, underground velocity, to our own chaotic bodies that have followed us north, tenacious as salt’s press.