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IN THE WATER THAT COMES BEFORE THE DAWN Foghorns, shrouded in their heavy working clothes, call one another. One moans, and the other gives back across the warm heart of town the tone, an octave lower. The faces of a family gather at the window of the laundromat. Although they're only beads of steam, a trick of moon, I refuse to look away. The smell of old men washed clean humbles me. I have been up all night. A car is parked in the drizzle where the bones of my face float in a puddle. In the phone booth I found a glove, brushed it against my chin, its fingers along my throat. Starlings call, herons lift off the ferry pilings; Danny Donovan, drunk, was kicking off soaked pants in the kitchen the night his bilge failed and had to stand to his waist in muck beside the mooring. Ten years later, on that gold evening, his tongue already deserting him, he saw the sea from the hospital bed; a boy in a boat turns from rowing, a white boat on the gold water. The foghorn quiet, a first rooster coughs at the dirty end of night. My shoes are wet.
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