I’ve Known Rivers (Modern, Pale Rivers)

There was only one of him.
There was only one.
There he was, welcoming
cockeyed glare, jut-jawed whooping
crane laugh, a laugh with elbows: our own
elfin art-world James Carville. He danced life
spine-supple, could Watusi theory inside
out, and liked to look. I always meant
to write him a poem, and didn’t.
Not this death-mask poem.
His voice
had the smell of a specific
object. On the phone, the animal
fat of bacon waffling fiber-optically.
His odd-metered silences always the invitation
to make up a better world on the spot, right
now. Optically micro- and macroscope,
Hudson periscoped past and future,
a mine-sweeper of impure and
pure pleasure.
There was only one of him.
There was only one.
There he was.
There he goes.
There, there.

for Hudson, in memoriam, on the occasion of an artspace.com tribute in the immediate wake of his passing, February 13, 2014, 4:53 a.m., Picadilly Circus, London