I take my Sunday exercise riverside,
not quite local, not quite a transient.
Dutch houseboats, gravel barges, nose by
teenagers tanning in Day-Glo gym shorts.
Waves slick as seal pelts undulate after, like
sun-dappled, ludic, sexual animals
—if you ignore the floating garbage
cast by the strollers and weekend sailors.
Three German students nap on their sleeping bags,
backpacks and water bottles niched next to them,
up on the slope of lawn beside the
playground, as safe as suburban puppies,
while, underneath a willow, a family:
blonde woman, man like African ebony,
her mother, almond-golden toddler,
picnic on Camembert, bread and apples.
I bring my books to sit in my favorite
spot, concrete steps that arc in a half-circle
out from the water. Sometimes, barges
pull up and tie up beside my elbow.
Shit! someone’s standing inches in back of me,
with all this space . . . . From vision’s periphery
I just can make out it’s a woman,
so I relax. Then she walks around me
on down the quai—a derelict madwoman,
drunk, drugged, or tranced, long hair to her knees, with bare
feet, flowered blouse and filthy trousers,
teetering there like a tightrope walker.
She pauses, kneels down, flinging her copious
brown, half-soaked hair, a blindfold, in front of her
so she can’t see where she is going
inches away from the churning water.
Who stops her, leads her farther away from the
edge, even asks her what she was doing there?
I don’t, although she’d come so close her
serpentine shadow fell on my notebook.
She halts, and sways in front of a sunbathing
young man engrossed in reading a paperback.
We others watch her staring at him,
grateful we aren’t the one she’s chosen.
No crisis: she traverses the half-circle
stone steps, away from water and audience,
sits in the dust behind a basalt
statue, lies down like exhausted dogs do.
So I dismiss her, turn back away from her.
So does the almost-naked man opposite.
We read, relieved of ever knowing
even what language she might have spoken.
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