Autumn House Press

Friday for the River

After work, you bring a yellow envelope
stuffed with tips from The Wheel Café.
My check from St. Francis Hospital
bears the saint’s image, arms raised in prayer.
This week we had two on suicide watch,
and a schizophrenic wrote his name in shit
on the quiet room wall. We stroll into the cold,
windless evening. It’s Friday, an illusion
of completeness upon us. Walking twilit streets
to the river, we pass people jostling home
or cramming into happy hours. Lights switch on
along the wharf, and the sky’s muted blue
corona fades behind Coal Hill.

The river gives back everything
the sky sends down. The bridge arcs
into its reflection, a perfect ellipse of girders.
The hill carries its dark complement,
houses clinging to its underbelly. Along West End,
the lamps set down spikes of light
that shiver in the gloom of the river bend,
the water surface invisible. You lean
against me, your eyes luminous
as the blue water. We look over the levee,
down into a stillness that contains us,
a stillness where a red full moon rises
into the depths of the Allegheny.