Industry

Industry

But it’s winter in Gloucester.

Shadows purple church steeples, settle

blue under eyes. Cold looms

like the Gorton’s fisherman, his light cast

over Rogers Street, thick as film on milk.

At the processing center, workers make fish

perpetual: cod bludgeoned and molded

frozen into sticks. Perfect with a promise

to trust the ones who caught it. 

Dark mornings, I slip to the Lone Gull Cafe, 

where fishermen linger in coffee-stained air. 

Christmas lights ignite the marsh 

like endless lighthouses.

Some say a daily dunk in ice will solve it all—

keep us happy through the seasons,

with the right tub or ocean—

but the beach is all foam, cold 

on gray sand. I watch a man 

dig for clams alone in his galoshes,

the dories docked and rocking.

Of sea we dream. Of sea so full

of fish we feel them slick

against our legs—

a different kind of wave.