My Daughter Charity Thinketh No Evil

After Herman Melville Glad, on time pennies click hard at your teeth everyone is throwing them Gathered about you in a circle on the deck everyone is catching them a blue flame about their heads cocked back over the railing Glass you think in the middle and wheat stands from which time is made on the upper decks’ passing of the banks That’s not the brittle moment above you On shore, leaves turn their gray sunless sides every which way The riverboat is very small it will never get here