Hymn to the Hudson

Back from the wooded place
that never did agree
to keep us safe
through any long
or cold, dark night,
we felt our mistake
as heavy as the airless summer
we drove smack into.
The car was filled with boxes
and the earth
breathed up,
then blew hard out,
a sudden fever
through every hole.
The cars were selfish
and meaner than ever.
So many, so loud,
it made me breathless.
I understood aloneness
in busy places
and why we make boxes
our souls keep watch and wait in.

I looked for a place
my eyes could squarely rest on
and my heart could wrap around.
I felt your sweetness
(the sweetness of a thing
that is fully itself,
not of candy
or whispers,
but when the body hums
just right with the mind,
or a forest you’re alone in,
or a storm that comes and goes),
and it roared.

I longed to be
thrust gently
into the arms of my city,
and I felt you take hold,
like one might do
with a dying friend
who needs no words.

All the years
we took from you
the right to go
unbroken,
east to west,
pole to pole,
took from you
the right
to travel light,
to make it home,
to stop and go,
untouched,
how was I to know
you’d carry me too
like you do
the salmon
and the sailor?
You,
who have been used,
your back
made slave
to what is never
enough,
you,
who have no reason
to love the ones
I come from,
held me like a baby
from a bough
so I would not fall
too quickly
to strangers.

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Tags:

hudson, hymn, poetry, river, water and writing