Blue Kayaks
| filed under: Poems, Kayaking, Poetry, Poem
Mark and I keep Kayaks at Jack's Boats and since I was writing too much about girls and about psychobabble, I thought it prudent to allow my inner naturalist to surface.
The blue plastic kayaks are perfect percussion instruments. The nudging
of a log, the tap of the oars, the lapping of the cool morning waters. I
usually sleep late. I usually wait until the morning is long past and the
day has begun and has moved closer to evening than the crack of anything.
But the morning haze. Is it fog? It shrouds the river. The water fowl
come to sight in grand grey silhouettes. the icy dense humid air swallows
the songs. makes morning even earlier.
The yellow of fog lamps. The honk of a horn. The wail of a siren. Only
these abominations remind me of rush hour.
These and the bloated grey carp, their bellies cut and rotted, bobbing
along with the current. The knives cutting, the singles pass. I am not
ever certain if the racing shells are physical or am I seeing things.
They never make any noise. When I rowed in an eight, there was grunting,
there was a coxswain and a cox box and a coach in a skiff and the clank of
the oar in the oarlock.
But not these singles. These knives. They are to electric cars as eight
man crews, the sweeps, are to the inefficient inline eights of the old
american gas guzzlers. Faster, yes, but an inelegant gracelessness.
©1997 chris abraham