Weston Cutter Exposure to Various Flow FOR JOHN HALTER Five to the good, we'd say into radios, the Mississippi filthy, aswirl and sunflinty all around us, five wide we'd tell the captain back in the pilot house as he ushered the barge half-blind toward the dock slowly. There was a line, a piling, green steel we knew to aim the boat toward kissing. Four and a half. From the deck Minneapolis stood sunlit, picturesque as a thin-dressed woman behind us and we ached to unzip so much, and we floated north in a neighborhood it was a crap-shoot to bike through past dusk. Four wide. Different captains wanted different widths, maneuvering dependent on weather, wind. The best scenario was dead-on, breezeless, coming in on the line, the barge's star -board corner aimed to connect like a slow-motion prize-fighter's face with the punch of the piling. Oddest was how we out there, bow's edge, were the nervous ones, watching, while the captains breathed deep, moving through other currents. Wind coming one way demanded one steering, the other way another: you aimed for the bad or good and counted on wind to correct things in the last seconds. Three to the good. The difference between coming in bad or good was where the boat was aimed to blind-man-touch the dock and the difference between us 19 year olds out on the boat's guard- rail and the captains we anxiously talked into the dock was weight, exposure to various flow, ability to steer 93-ton barges against and into spring-flood-fed running water or wind. Foot and a half to the good. The difference was that none of us on those boats's edges had taken our loves up to the top floor of any of those skyscrapers whose reflections we floated past + boated through- the difference was the captains had, and did, and while we'd talk kissing and bases the older men would laugh at us and, arms across their chests, kindly not tell us what we didn't know. Foot wide. The best times were easy like falling, like drinking that fourth beer: inevitable as a perfect first kiss, or last kiss, or whichever kiss it'd be that let us know which girl we were supposed to take to those floors and buy dinner for. We painted our limbs onto the horizon's darkening blue, threw heavy rope at metal and hoped it took. Line on. The captains couldn't see the corners we stood on with our radios and lifejackets, we couldn't've driven those boats, and we never said it but all hoped someone was watching, would see our cinema, how gently we could, with effort (rope on metal, river's current read), guide. | 
