Walking through the woods he took a chance --
simply turned and plunged through the trees
at the edge of the marsh, out onto the
half-frozen grass with its swampy smell of
all things quick and dead.
He stepped along a line of tide
with grass laid flat in an arc
in the faint light of moon behind cloud,
breathing the molecules of last year’s leaves
and leaves long moldered, turned to mud,
burrowed by crabs, picked at by gulls,
stabbed by herons and egrets and bitterns.
And of course, having taken the chance,
found the boat at the water’s edge,
an old boat with sprung strakes,
color of cloudlight, a pirate’s cast,
shadowed black inside,
a boat for good or bad, with the ebb tide
dragging at its transom, on its way.
He stepped out to it, sinking, finally,
into the salty muck, shin-deep,
took hold of the prow, lifted, and pushed.
The boat swam free of the bank,
and joined the dark, unhurried current,
spinning once on its own axis
and drifting out, and out of sight.
He reached down into the cold water
and rinsed the mud from his hands,
stood straight, pulled, very slowly,
a boot from the ooze, then turned
and planted it in a previous foothole,
a mud dancer plié, mid-marsh, at midnight,
and returned in the steps he had made.
~~~~~~~~~~
Douglas Logan
Rowboat appeared in 2007 in Balancing the Tides.
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