Midday train to Albany I take a window seat
left side I need to see to trace the river
Two talkative women take the seat behind
I move forward find a pleasant island No one
in front of or behind me
The train begins to move twelve minutes
in deep dark then the vague light
West Side Highway George Washington Bridge
Out of Manhattan the train picks up speed
and the world becomes what the river gives
its rocky edge skirting the occasional warehouse
the riverside parks The Hudson where people
have been having their way with the world
for hundreds of years The river reminds me
how old I am
Heading into the city four days ago
across the aisle two young women jabbered
in Dutch What do they know about Henry Hudson
What do I
Soon the Tappan Zee the new bridge growing
next to her older sister A line of paired pilings
Workers skittering up and down the half built piers
months perhaps years to go
A tug painted to match the barge it pushes
Belly full of oil pumped from a tanker in Albany
Hundreds of black balloons strung between
the interstate's north south lanes
Indian Point what I am waiting for comes
into view The twin reactors across the river
nudge the shore My politics once so certain
now diffuse After a brief flurry I am back
to passing through barely noticing The reactors
still reacting strangely comforting perhaps because
we go back a fair amount of time
And then West Point sullen glinting even
without the sun The train continues pushing past
the blah landscape colored by the blah weather
We are coming up to Beacon the bridge
to Newburgh I swam across the river here
Twice as a matter of fact Hundreds of swimmers
swimming in the name of Clean Water
Pete Seeger still around then singing us off in Beacon
and then as if spirited by some force there he was
in Newburgh as we climbed from the river still singing
"If I had a hammer"
Today the river is as gray as the day Perhaps
it is slack tide those few moments twice a day
when saltwater mingles with fresh
Not mixing merely touching planes riding
one another a frictionless friction where rivers meet seas
Two places in one time this place where I will stay
