I went out walking just to be
by the river for a while, to be
alone by the water, in the wind
kicking up whitecaps
in the cold, because I wanted
to be out along a footpath
in the cold watching a black
tug go by, its bridge
all wind-eaten white, and a black
barge with cargo stacked up
in red containers on the deck,
the winter work just going on,
and Jersey, over there,
lost in a petrochemical dream.

John Foy’s first book is Techne’s Clearinghouse (Zoo Press). His poems are included in the Swallow Anthology of New American Poets, The Raintown Review Anthology, and Rabbit Ears, an anthology of poems about TV. They have appeared widely in journals and online, including in Poetry, The Hudson Review, The New Criterion, The Village Voice, Parnassus, American Arts Quarterly, the Alabama Literary Review, The Dark Horse, The Yale Review, Barrow Street, The Hopkins Review, and Angle, an online literary journal in the UK. His essays and reviews have appeared in Parnassus, The New Criterion, the Contemporary Poetry Review, The Dark Horse (in Scotland), and other publications, and he has been a guest blogger for Best American Poetry. Visit him at www.johnffoy.net.