Mississippi Queens
eighteen dollars will buy you an hour's passage on the worn & weary Mark Twain
the same stretch under Lover's Leap,
an idle paddle wheel dragged cyclically, on and on
by her diesels
costumed so long,
moored not far from horrid wax figures,
similarly fated
who bare old Sam's names with the rest of them,
the Hannibilians assuredly assuaged by their sounds,
so heard
the ambiance of the little town,
shrill with tourists' wonder,
depression of the damned,
envisaged waterborne toxins
despite it all,
I departed her as a newfound touchstone,
knowing she's just up twenty four,
eighteen dollars away,
no time soon to break her jaded rhythm
as a forgotten timepiece,
buried in a rank cellar
supposing she'd ease most crisis that could ever befall me
she and her unsalted captain,
who has not aged (truthfully, I do remember.)