To Kisangani

The travelers push upriver for a week,
the wood-fired boiler steaming.

Animal cages stacked on deck, rust flaking
from the rail, the opaque water churning.

In Tanzania they saw flamingos at Makat,
lake of salt, the pale feathers, pink blood.

And in Rwanda, the church with its pews
ruined under a rain of machete blows.

The road curves along the river, the city
leaning backward as if it might slip away.

The charcoal makers shake ash into the sky,
foreign shopkeepers smoking in doorways.

A dark lump bumps the hull–a rotting hemp sack
or an unidentifiable dead animal or who knows.

The boat grinds back into the current, monkeys
screaming and throwing feces from the trees.

Progress

In the bay at Mombasa, a man swims
through the dark rainbows, the oil
leaking from tankers rocking at anchor.

He brushes against a steel hull, comes away
smeared with the smell.  The wind picks up
and in the chop of waves he chokes, swallows
a mouthful of thickened water, almost sweet.

Though the air is cool, there’s the usual swarming
of flies and mosquitos, the strutting of black and white
crows along the shore.  He paddles on his back looking up.

How easy it is–arms rising in a circle
from his waist and over his face.
He can’t see his hands ahead of him,
how they pull him backward.