It’s weird the way sound bends and arcs

on a foggy day beside the river, as if

it gets confused by all the water everywhere:

in the air; between the banks; between the waves

of noise that bounce around in all those molecules. 

Even moody and mist-covered, the river

is ugly, riddled with geese and gray as wet wool.

The only honest light tips the very tops

of the birches, which is the best place to look:

up.  Sixty miles north of here this rope

of dirty water runs into the Allegheny River

just west of Rachel Carson Bridge.  And docked

not far from the confluence is the Stella Maris,

which sank once after slamming into a half-

submerged boxcar, the only one left in the river

after the trestle gave way a few years back

and dumped twenty cars and an engineer

into the muck.  When they hauled the boat

off the bottom and patched her hull

and sat her back in the water, she was still

called the Clara Bow.  But her captain knew

enough to thank Our Lady Star of the Sea,

and rechristened his freshly wrecked and

restored little vessel, which most days puttered

back and forth beneath the three bridges,

tourists lining the rails, safe and sane in sight

of the skyscrapers of downtown Pittsburgh. 

Stella Maris, nay Saint Corona.  His kids

drove him sixty miles south, drove him home

in an urn per a note he left in his sock drawer. 

And here and now I’m mixing ashes and glitter

and breaking my promise to scatter my old friend

in Mexico.  But if things go right, a little part of him

will drift north into the Allegheny, and then a bit

further to the Ohio, and then loop around south

to the Mississippi.  And if the stars hold hands

he’ll make it all the way to the Gulf.  Yup,

you guessed it:  The Gulf of Mexico.  Close enough.