Living Among Boats
by Evan Harrison
It’s us and sea—
that’s how we thought,
not because we curled together
on the floor of a boat at rest,
dried on a rusted-trailer down Twine Lane,
but because a rain of stars
made our only company.
Faces close to the residue of cut fish and salt,
we reconsidered what was just done: lifting
that gasoline from some other boat
and pooling it on the blacktop of Brakewood.
Flashlights darting like flies,
preceded by swimming through briar tangles and loose trees,
preceded by seeing headlights hover,
then straighten,
preceded by inferno leaps and visible grins—
this is how it flowed back to us,
and feeling hooked, cramped, and young—
this is how if flowed out of us.
