In the surviving scraps of marsh that form
the only untouched borders between New Jersey and New York,
two swans dipped their heads below October water
to seek a meal in the murk.
From my train window I took their poised, parallel backs,
as a pair of clouds stopped to see their miniature faces below,
at first for something a little more inscrutable
than the first snow floes of an anxious season.
As inscrutable as faces sometimes are
I have probably asked a killer what time it is,
where the station lies, when the office opens,
where the norths and souths are,
and he’s probably told me, pleasantly,
pointed his gun hand to indicate the direction
or even penned it on a random scrap of paper
and sent me on my way
thinking how nice the people in this backwater are,
how courteous, kind, and circumspect;
why, next time that I shoot my mouth off at any of them
I might just feel regret.
Paula Neves, a student in the Rutgers-Newark English graduate program, grew up in Newark and Kearny, N.J. She returns to the area weekly for class and her mother’s Portuguese cooking.
