Photograph of My Mother on the River Styx

                                                                                                .

A red reflection unfolds along

the hull like the brim of a party hat. 

Red, because she’s a tourist at heart,

a lover of brightness, of pilgrimages

close to home, Cruising Down the River,

accordion style, crackling from

a speaker; upright wooden benches

cradling pools of bathing suit water,

tangy with silt, with the river’s

own brown microbial dreams.

You can tell it’s late afternoon, because

shadows lengthen and trail the boat,

and the denseness of the water, doesn’t

the word glaucous sound like that:

all gelled and silvery green, thick as

mucous on the tongue?   How still

she looks, among strangers, with

only the lingua franca of silence

between them, while she waits for

the boat to dock, for Charon

to take her by tip of the elbow

and steady her as she disembarks.