Two Poems by James Doyle

Boston Harbor is iced in. Captains
walk in snowshoes to their ships.

The crews are cavalier for the tropics--
they remember dozing in the holds,

the steamy flanks of cattle, scuttling
sun from island to island, Tabasco

light in red slabs. Now purple gone
to ground, the sails’ rigging in slabs,

sleds of waterfront rum stalled
at the horse sheds. The masts skew

crooked in the cold. Boston waits.
The ice can’t hold its breath forever.

Since the snow has more directions
than a compass, the sailors will

themselves its center, melt it
in their fists. It runs through

their fingers, refreezes as it hits
the ground. The miles of white silence

suddenly whirl around them like vertigo.
They must hold onto their own visible

breaths for balance. They are salvage,
moored in the claims of a future season.

The power of the trees to shake sun down
for its burnt-out chips. And the rain

that can never get enough of the forest.
The brush works its way out of tangles,

leans over the bank, dumps its decay, rich
protein into the Amazon. In a long boat

without a motor, the rowers are tanagers
following the river dolphin upstream.

The legends say tanagers can sing only
when the dolphin leaps. The song is quick

and floral, their skins bright with paint.
The arc of the rowers’ arms, the arc

of the dolphin. When the river returns
to its source, the air has nothing left

but to start again. Surely other tanagers,
decay, dolphins, rowers downstream.

James Doyle