Situation
rivers
upon which boats strain but make no progress
Proust, A la Recherche du Temps Perdu
The tidy town through which the river flows
does business steadily to feed itself
and gives no thought to where the river goes
across countryside to the coastal shelf.
Settled in its unsettled way, the boat
is locked in the doldrums of its own wake
and calls it success to stay afloat,
being a boat for being a boat’s sake.
The water ripples still around the prow.
The under-powered motor, melancholy
with efforts to sustain it here and now,
accepts that it is going nowhere slowly.