Departures
Despite the sunset ripening
to starboard, I look up: steel ribs
swallow the river as we slip
beneath the Manhattan Bridge,
our twilit wake
cut off by a tugboat towing
sediment. If I had worked the caisson,
what would I believe? Down there,
in a pine box with Jonah
and the crew, we shoveled muck to sink
—slowly—toward bedrock,
our hearts whipping
in that terrible air, so rich
his vocal cords can only flap while a spark
flares and roars until—
My body remembers to breathe
out. The
water bends.
Liberty carries a torch
for the skeletal cranes of Red Hook.
Jersey laughs like Dad, but with a pipe.
David Elliot Eisenstat has contributed poems to THINK, The Pierian, and Rust & Moth among others. A Poetry Editor for Variant Lit, he lives in Brooklyn. Find more of his work at https://www.davideisenstat.com/poetry/.
Photo credit @KathrynCooperWeddings on Instagram
the water and the gills 