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Zvi A. Sesling’s is a member of the Somerville Bagel Bards. His poetry is in print and online journals in U.S., India, France, U.K., N.Z., Ireland, Canada and Israel. Featured readings include: Jewish Poetry Festival, Brookline, MA, Massachusetts and Boston Poetry Festivals, Boston, MA area venues and readings in San Diego, CA. He edited Bagel Bard Anthologies #7 & #8. He publishes Muddy River Books and edits Muddy River Poetry Review. Sesling authored King of the Jungle, (Ibbetson St., 2010), Across Stones of Bad Dreams (Cervena Barva, 2011) and Fire Tongue (Cervena Barva, 2016). He lives in Chestnut Hill, MA with his wife Susan J. Dechter.

Dirty Water

Zvi A. Sesling

Well I love that dirty water

Oh, Boston, you’re my home

— The Standells

They have been cleaning the Charles River for umpteen years –

now they say you can swim in it

But who knows what is in there: old cars rusting away, pieces

of the Longfellow Bridge they’ve been fixing for years

Goose poop by the tons – you can see fifty or more geese and goslings

at one time swimming and if they have eaten they are pooping

A few ducks here and there on the river really do not matter but geese

are protected and no one knows why

No one is going to gun, bow arrow or sling shot any of them

because the goose protection police are going to attack

Of course the same folks who protect the geese could be reporting on

the muggers who are out there mugging lovers as they stroll

Or they could report the mentally deranged rapist who drags some

poor girl into the bushes

No one calls the real police to rescue any victim who dares walk or jog

along the Charles River in broad daylight

Is it safe to go swimming in the river where the HMS Somerset was

anchored on April 18, 1775

When the river was much wider and swimming was a fun sport for

Colonists and British

Then it was filled in to build houses and when sewer systems were added

they emptied into the venerable river

All sorts of sand, dirt, tools and sewage were heaved into the Charles

so that two hundred years later pollution is in the water

So polluted in fact that a song was written about it, so polluted only

catfish and bad bacteria survive

So now they – whoever they are – say it is safe to swim again but

do not drink it, just swim

Perhaps they will keep cleaning it, maybe dredge it, somehow make it drinkable

and we will love our clean water, oh Boston  you’re my home

— Zvi A. Sesling

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