Barge Lights on the Hudson

For Dana and Mary Gioia

Glass door to the balcony slid open,

We step from the party to a night so clear

Only diamonds could scratch it. Below us,

River barges look like floating dominoes,

And we seem to hear boatmen singing, but that may

Be simply chanties from another condominium

Along these cliffs. Hours, you say,

Should pass as slowly and as beautifully

As those lights on the Hudson. Leaning here

Against the railing, shoulders barely touching,

We play a child's game of connect-the-dots

To bring out of the dark a tiny tugboat

In which a phantom pilot, legs spread wide apart,

Wholeheartedly steers-his face

Rimose as the moon's. One by one,

Others join us, until all along

The balcony a line of men and women

Lean and whisper, staring down, and some

Say the river's asphalt, others that

U-galaxies drift there,

Or we are in a science-fiction movie

Watching starships in a planet exodus

Across the Coalsack. Soon, however,

The party flares up in the living room, those few

Who linger here grow silent, watching until all

Lights disappear toward Troy, and just the oars

Of Irving's ghost row out from Tarrytown.