Because if we never looked back we might acquire

The true indifference of the soul as it travels,

As if on foot,

Over rocks, roots, stream beds, through

The smoke of distant cities,

Until it feels as if it is floating—

A still place in the body

That does not move,

Though we do.

*

Today, I talked to those men in the boat who

Saved the two teenagers, who

Unload off the pier there, in Rock Island, Illinois,

And who live on those barges.

Already two of the youngest of them have one

Or two fingers missing.

I finally overcame my shyness enough

To ask them, & understood at once,

When they told me

About unloading

At night—how you can hear almost nothing

As the barge draws closer & closer

To the dock, & how, often, the one light required

By state law is burned out there, & how,

Out of tiredness, you might curl your hands,

Unconsciously, & out of habit, over the gunwales

Of the boat, just as

The older men had cautioned you not to,

And then you can almost hear, over the slipping

Of water, the soft, hollow thunk

Of wood on wood. That is,

You might hear it if it weren't for the pain

At that moment—how it erases almost everything else

In your life, & all sounds, until

You know you will have this one life, this river,

As long as you live—

If only

Because no one else will hire you now.

I talked to them a long time. At a certain hour

Of night, you can hear the precise fall of every

Syllable, you can hear the slipping of water,

And you think you know why the lights

On the opposite shore

Are silent, have always been silent,

And why the Peabody coal mines in this part

Of the state are all

Boarded up by now.

And no. No one, his pick or hammer fallen to one side

Like a world, is left down there.

No one. Unless he wears an eternal smile on his face,

Which is a betrayal of all other smiles.

I don't want to believe he is real, if only

Because teenagers swim nude in the quarries

Above those mines.

And yet, now that I mention him,

I think it is only right that he is there,

Somehow, & that the mines are closed.

I would like to believe

That his grin might say how much the body

Misses its only abiding guest,

Or that the eye holes in every skull

Are merely cliff dwellings abandoned for higher, &

More lasting residences;

Or that it matters, being half French

And a descendant of certain hard-headed horse traders,

Drunks, gamblers, & women with lace camisoles

Who would as soon cut

Your throat as look at you,

And who, out of some obscure gentleness,

Decided only to stare out,

Finally, from a photograph,

As if in a kind of defiance, or bewilderment.

I wish I knew,

Though, at a certain hour