AT THE MOUTH OF THE HARBOR: MEMORY 

 

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Across the Hudson on

the New Jersey side

the Colgate factory clock

tells the time. Otherwise

 

a stillness, still is the Harborside

Terminal falling in on itself,

still the water towers and smokestacks

blowing no smoke, still

 

the warehouses. Inside the buildings, 

however, much is going on—

someone is peeing, someone sips 

coffee, someone tools a mechanical arm.

 

I can’t see them. I see clouds

buffeting an ocean of sky.

The sun breaks through.

It looks like rain.

 

And then a helicopter

shreds the silence, green

flashings from its silver

underbelly, and the steady

 

two beat of a tugboat diesel drums 

the silence when a wind rips the waters,

picks up a nettle of sand

and throws it in my face.

 

How long has it been, another

weather, another season and year?

We walked the Westside landfills

down to where I stand.

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There was snow on the ground

and near zero cold. We took refuge

behind spiked cedar planks and curled

tightly like prawns into a frozen berm.

 

That was long, long, long ago.

The landfill is Battery City Park

and the wooden shed home

to the new Dow Jones.

 

Yet sometimes I think

physics has yet to explain

what the body intuits

for I can almost lick

 

the salt on your lips, 

smell you urgent as if a molecular

residue lingers long after as

perfume lingers long after in air.

 

And if I look close enough,

the crescent moons our bodies

pressed in the shifting parabolas

of iced sand glisten

 

now where green shoots

prattle in a dying wind.

The sun breaks through.

It looks like cold.

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BIO:

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​Ronald Okuaki Lieber is a licensed psychoanalyst practicing in NYC. His book of poems, The Long Journey Out, is available through all major book vendors. More information can be found at ronaldokuakilieber.com

 

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