Tugboat on the Hudson

It has been cold for two weeks
and the ice has built on the river,
breaking on itself, huge blocks
of hard white water, flung
hard and high,
clog the channel.
The water, once fluid
as love, now lies
brittle and belligerent,
trapping all who have the arrogance
to sit still.

A barge lies near the shoreline,
a captive for too long,
hungry to recapture the flow
of water under it’s hull,
hungry to rejoin the journey
to the sea, to new shores,
remembered, but lost
in the vast wash of frozen waters.

A tug, blunt nosed and rugged,
churns, it’s bow pressed
against the barge’s flat stern,
ugly and powerful,
slow and sure as God
it presses forward,
breaking the unwilling ice,
and moving all once again
towards the horizon.

About this poem

Sometimes we get stuck in life. And we can’t get ourselves out. We need something, someone, to break us free. Not forever, but for that little, powerful nudge that breaks the ice.

The picture was taken during a train trip last week. It is indeed somewhere on the Hudson River.

Tom