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The Gowanus. Expressway, not canal


by Walter Bjorkman


The Gowanus. Expressway, not canal,
a blue steel turned green turned paint gray
turned green paint gray steel elevated road
that whisks other people to the pancake streets
of manhattan in the morning to return them
to their grass-green supper lives
too far away to imagine but close enough
to drive to, that in its cradle
against new york harbor
kept one group
safely from another
except for the daring on each side
that would tryst and fist under its never
green shadows — groups that never walk away unsated
in their hunt for desires not felt on either side of the crescent
called Gowanus where you hunker down over a sheet laid out
on the dirt in the cave formed by the concrete support
that you climb up and over and under the green gray girders above
down into where highway and park workers keep their implements
door locked three times shut die-casting your future in money and blood
if this next roll doesn't come up eight
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