Hiking upstream along the Charles River
I picture my uncles — Leo, Tom, Charlie,
& Joe — rowing a homemade boat
thirty miles downstream to Boston.
When I was a teen, Charlie — his loose-lipped
maniacal grin — dared me to believe it.
Venturing out in a boat like Odysseus
off to Troy, their sisters watching them go.
It must have been a hard row back home.
Today the river smells sour — chemical
& organic, polluted or thriving — earth
doesn’t speak, wind & cloud won’t say.
Side by side these rural rights of way.
More than a decade these boys, their
sisters, all but these pictures are gone.
The river outruns us, mud-brown water
flowing around & through the livid greens.
