Heartless
I stand above the river and look down.
“Have you no heart?” Of course
it doesn’t. It’s not a nightingale.
“Ain’t you got no heart?” Frank Nitti,
flat on his back, said to Eliot Ness,
as Ness towered over him,
pistol in hand, in an Untouchables
on my Motorola’s screen. Back to the river.
I know it as well as any body of water
expert, though I’ve never been in it or on it.
Another river, in, yes, but not this river.
Were I the poet William Stafford,
I could say firmly “Ask the river.”
It sloshes. It has neither heart nor soul.
I live near it. Some neighbor
might claim it has a soul. Get real!
This river, shaped something like an S,
a bit hourglass, bends, curves,
in line with the bank I’m on
and the bank on the other side.
Willows, sycamores, bushes, and grass
grow there, as they grow here.
My “no heart talk” is talk to myself
and to anyone who wants to listen
or happens to hear. This bank’s mud,
blackish blue, gleams.
The river’s color, that of pea soup,
bears a five o’clock shadow. One willow
on the opposite bank is lovely.
If it could talk, it would have the pitch
and timbre of the silver-tongued Johnny
Dollar, Bob Bailey of radio fame.