Hudson River

The weak winter sun washes
over the nearly empty Hudson.
It’s a Tuesday afternoon,
and the millions are busy elsewhere.
It’s just me and the seagulls
between the gray towel of the sky
and the gray glass of the river.

Once I walked the crowded sidewalks.
When I stood still, the river parted,
and people flowed by me as if
around an island.

Now I prowl lonelier paths
along Manhattan’s shore,
too old for ambition
and too young for death.

Alone on the 80th Street Pier,
gazing at the anchored container ship
and the stoic Jersey condos,
I walk toward the gulls perched on the railing.
One step too close and they leap up
in a clatter of wings, circle overhead
and settle on the next pier to the south.

© Geoffrey Himes, New York, NY 2/8/23

This Job

I never chose this job;
the job chose me:
the village chronicler.

I am caught in clothes
that I can’t take off,
pockets stuffed with notes.

A circle of gray stones,
vertical like frozen elders,
describes the boundary.

One foot in the circle,
one foot out,
hips shifting back and forth.

I listen like a cousin.
I write like a stranger.
I am one person living as two.

I don’t cast a shadow.
I am a shadow, sliding along
without apparent source.

© Geoffrey Himes, Baltimore, MD 1/18/23

Instructions for Supper

A small, sharp shovel
to dig up an onion,
a smaller, sharper knife
to slice and dice.

Soften the onions
in a shallow pond of butter.
Scoop the cubes
into a boiling pot of beans.

Slurp the soup.
Slap the table.
Unbuckle your belt.
Chuckle your chin.

© Geoffrey Himes, Baltimore, MD 1/25/23

New Leaves in April

On a mid-April morning in Maryland,
the leaves are unfolding,
maybe a quarter of their eventual size.
I can still see through the trees
from ridge to river, but not as clearly.
Now everything is tinged in green,
the sacramental glow of chlorophyll,
as innocence is altered
by the first flush of knowledge.

© Geoffrey Himes

A True Story

It was the morning we finally talked about
what neither of us wanted to talk about.
I told the famous story of the women I love.
She said, I can't do this anymore.
We sprawled across her bed and stared off
into the distance of her yellow walls,
our mouths were classrooms at Christmas
as chalky as they were empty.

We were rocks on a hillside that
rolled into each other
as if it were our last chance.
We thrashed like animals in a trap.
We collapsed like athletes after a defeat.
We changed into clean white clothes
and chatted over eggs and muffins.

We drove downtown to the Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit.
We stood in the exact center of the gallery
and stared at the moist, folded invitation of orchids,
at the dry, white denial of cattle bones,
and recognized what threw us together
and what threw us apart.

© Geoffrey Himes, Washington, DC, 1/6/88

Irish Music

Inside this cup of coffee,
a shot of whiskey’s swimming.
I’m leaning over the gunwale
to wish it into my nets.

She beckons with extended hand
as if she were a lifeguard.
She pulls me from this sloshing tide
out onto the dance floor.

The fiddles plunge into a reel;
the squeezebox moans with joy.
Grabbing my elbow with baited hook,
she pulls me from my depths.

And when the band begins a waltz,
she becomes my oilskin slicker.
Round and round and round we go
on the roofs of this harbor village.

But when the music’s over,
and the moon's left out to dry.
She goes back to sand and stone
and I to familiar waters.

© Geoffrey Himes, Baltimore, MD 10/20/23