Jim Cronin
Drive
The swan boats roundelay all day
in the brief lagoon.
Plastic shopping bags drift on the surface.
The paddle-wheel scrapes the bottom
washed in muck and cigarette butts,
shocking the dirt below, softening up clods.
The riders are always the same, young
or old or middle-aged. They translate
baggage of sweatshirts and cameras
luminous with churches and subway cars,
golden domes and colleges.
Their eyes bend back nothing
of my face, my shivered hands,
my sunburned nose and collar.
I am purely execution,
nameless, an organ of propulsion.
Nameless in a crowd of drakes
I take lunch by the lagoon,
tossing a few crumbs
for their fellowship...
O mallard, possess and help me
spoil this withering hide.
When you come, be as the gale,
be light-burst or wing-beat.
Transport me from this world
of hack and push, feather and bone.
Jim Cronin is a poet living in Boston, MA, all the while plotting a move to the country. He can usually be found wandering forest trails, or reading about them. Jim was the founding and poetry editor of the White Whale Review, an online literary journal. He has been published in The Somerville News and has a poem forthcoming in the September issue of Fox Chase Review. He is also a member of the New England Poetry Club.
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