Upon This Wide Water, For Staten Island Ferry, Circa 1985, Manhattan Poem by Warren Falcon

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'On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross,
returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose,
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are
more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.'
- Walt Whitman, from 'Crossing Brooklyn Ferry'


1

Upon this wide water, Whitman's bay, wandering
outward toward Eastward windings -

Upon this white-starred charted bay we ride
gray with midnight leaning toward the Towers**
distant growing, stalking, yellow and glowing,
mimicking the stars -

Our eyes stare tearing,
seawind pushes lids to slits.
We glimmer. Lights shimmer
ahead and above,
and still we cry -

the wind.


The ferry, furtive, floats the edge of Manhatta.
There's power pushing against the bow,
riptides to the rear, but we go on,
approach sleepily, enamored of gin and
the beds we will make again and again
pulling sheets tighter. This stretching water
safe-keeps the light of eyes and the city there-

Upon the water's wide skirt one will, quiet,
lift up a hand to the spray, sway for love,
and pray for the world -

A dark tern unfurls from the sail
of a starboard yacht, flirts once
with the silhouette extended upon
the wave, then leaves, an under
turning rail or rudder sinking in
the ferryman's wake.

Each night there must be one, out there,
on the deck, supplicating in boozy tongue,
oozing heart-love all over, spurning the way
things go down in the world, cheap spindrift
the cranes know of, dipping their bloated beaks
to the waves. And he must dip his head, braying,
with his hands motioning to the night -

Away! Away!


[**World Trade Towers]