no title / lone wolf

Swansea, and the landscape is occupied.

the barbecue grill is active on deck

and the lawn's expanse is dotted with players

and their color-coded mallets.

beyond the tree-line, the river runs southward

in its attitude of persistence toward the Bay.

It's a few hours before dark and the heavy-

handed power station at Brayton Point,

sits on the inlet splitting the larger Taunton river
and the smaller Lee river which flows into it.

from the sightline eastward crossing the Taunton,
Fall River rises upon the hill, a density

in three-deckers, many dressed in new vinyl, exhausted

textile mills, smokestacks cold with inactivity,
and church steeples heralding the remnants of God.

further eastward, the city continues before evaporating between

the great freshwater ponds at the Narrows of the Watuppa,

once the home of the sprawling Wampanoag nation.

the Sun is three hours from setting. the light is enormous.

common sparrows are active at the living tree-line

on the western banks of the river, now intensely grey,

rolling in its southerly heading like a ream of metal

in the midst of a luscious landscape, but nothing

comes to me now which hasn’t come to me before.

9/4/13