Evening by the River

A Poem by Gary Whited

From Wayfarer Magazine, Issue 42»

Photo by Michael Krahn

“People beside the river are watching the boats.”
—David Ferry from “Down by the River”



The footbridge’s arches look up at themselves
From the near perfect still water below,

As if completing their work for the day,
But of course they won’t stop holding the bridge

Through the night for passersby to keep walking
Somewhere, wherever it is they are going 

To be going. Odd how I take comfort
In knowing that I don’t know, not in what

It is I don’t know, but that it’s there, as if
It meant to hold me up as I cross to where 

It is I don’t know I am going to.
Ya can’t get there from here I’m told they say

Up in Maine when someone stops to ask for
Directions, and I nestle my want to know

Inside this little joke, or whatever it is,
And I don’t even know what the joke means.

Maybe it’s just an expression to tease
Someone wanting to get somewhere they don’t

Know how to get to. Maybe, as David might say,
Something in us lives there inside the curve 

Of that not knowing, and something we don’t 
Yet see glides through, that way a boat might pass 

Beneath this bridge, maybe sometime in early 
Morning, sometime when no one is here, as I am

Just now, to see it, and it won’t ever 
Be known, I guess, if no one sees it, but 

Maybe a wake will ripple the water, 
Signal that someone has slipped between 

The curves of arch and arch looking up at itself,
An almost indiscernible glimpse into

What lives inside what we do not know—
That gate, we might say, to over there.

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Gary Whited (he/him) is a poet, philosopher and psychotherapist. His first book titled, Having Listened, won the 2013 Homebound Publications Poetry Contest. In 2014 it received a Benjamin Franklin Silver Book Award, and in 2015 was translated into Russian and a bilingual edition was published. His second book, Being, There was published by Wayfarer Books in 2023. It includes new poems along with his translation of the ancient Greek fragments of Parmenides from the 5th century BCE. His poems have appeared in journals, including Salamander, Plainsongs, The Aurorean, Atlanta Review, Comstock Review, The Wayfarer, Poetry Daily, The Red Letters and Kasparhauser.