And a bridge with traffic passing or stalled above

The water which, turning white, does so only

Out of necessity, & not for anyone's amusement.

It is, maybe, a hundred feet deep in the middle.

Last week, two teenagers from Chicago, because

They were in love, held hands & jumped—& were

Pulled onto a barge by men in gray rain slicks

Who risk getting maimed daily, & who, as I

Learned later, sometimes are, & for wages that

Are water. The newspaper account said the five men

Asked the kids no questions, gave them coffee,

And talked only of baseball.

On days like this,

Students lie out on the riverbank, getting

Tan. They wear next to nothing, just as,

In the nineteenth century, couples & whole families

Posed here, fully dressed, & with hats on, for

The tinted photograph. In Black River Falls,

In 1870, their mill burned, & my

Ancestors held their breath, anyway, for

An Easter portrait. They look hot, uncomfortable,

And most of the men are dressed in black suits

Too small for them. If you want to know, I'm thinking

Of the widow with the wide eyes, Nona Laroche,

Who's dead now, & who, for days after the fire,

Could still smell smoke on her clothes. Because she

Was French, & without money then, because

She had never voted, because all she had ever wanted

Was to live outside America, outside the stiff

Clothes framed by the photograph & the river &

The pious smoke rising from each chimney,

She had packed up everything left uncharred.

In California, in a few years, she

Had taught the men to break horses so gently

They soon sold the fastest horses south

Of Sacramento. Their voices, each morning,

Soft, transparent as silk over the corrals

And the black shade cast by oak trees.

And then, years later, ten Málaga vine cuttings,

And more on the way. Four mules. Enough water.

The smell of smoke on their clothes again for weeks

As they cleared the land & burned the silver limbs

Of cotton woods. The bonnets the women wore

To mass were a dark lace, a mystery even

To them, & a grim Latin over their skulls—

All made from the same lace used for camisoles

Which their men would undo, later at night, when there

Was plenty of laughter, & when the first wine

Made from those grapes was so bad it was

Hilarious. And did they love each other?

Some great uncle, if the dead could shrug, & they

Can't, would say: “They loved fast horses.”

Sometimes I almost believe her soul looks out

Of the photograph, almost clears the sill

Of the eyes & comes near; though it does not ever

Move, it holds me while I look at it.

But even today, I can't conceive of a soul

Without seeing a woman's body. Specifically,

Yours, undoing the straps of an evening dress

In a convertible, & then lying back, your breasts

Holding that hint of dusk mixed with mint

And the emptiness of dusk. Someone put it