Awaiting the Ferry

by Devon Balwit

For the first hour, you are mostly

            with us, head turning

where we point, tongue lathing

            social conventions,

but as the evening wears and you weary,

            you retreat, eyes

cadaverous, each breath a squeezing

            of bellows.

By night’s end, when you topple

            to the floor, it fails

to surprise, you already so far

            along the dark road

we’ve no clue how to regather you.

            Body and soul

have little use for one another, yet

            the knot’s not simple

to unpick. We lift your walker

            across mud and root, settle

you in your seat, pay Charon’s fare

            to home you.

* * * * *

Devon Balwit teaches in Portland, OR. She has six chapbooks and three collections out, among them: We are Procession, Seismograph (Nixes Mate Books), Risk Being/Complicated (A collaboration with Canadian artist Lorette C. Luzajic); Where You Were Going Never Was (Grey Borders); and Motes at Play in the Halls of Light (Kelsay Books). Her individual poems can be found here as well as in The Cincinnati Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Fifth Wednesday, the Aeolian Harp Folio, Red Earth Review, Queen's College Quarterly, The Fourth River, The Free State Review, Red Paint Hill, and more.