Hello, River!

“Hello, river!” I exclaim
as we round the bend in the road
and climb the gentle curve
slowing into Albany.

My wife laughs,
but we share the same
sense of awe and wonder
every time we see it,
spreading out, and out some more
to the tree-lined shore
on the Iowa side.

Who first was amazed
by the sheer majesty of it,
by its steely sparkle,
by its surprising coldness, and
by its quiet, but immeasurable
power?

How many herons, egrets, and cranes
have rooked their young
in its marshy backwaters?

How many eagles and pelicans
have harvested shad
from its swift, rocky rapids?

And who can count
the soft-shelled turtles that have
gently laid clutches of eggs
in the banks of the Big Muddy?

Innumerable trains have crossed it,
endless strings of barges have traversed it
from its head in the wilds of Minnesota
to the fabled Louisiana delta,
but I always say hello whenever I see it,
as though it were the very first time –
because, for me, it always is.
 

They say you can’t step
in the same river twice,
and that’s the way I see it, too,
as always changing,
always growing,
like the wild and beautiful
living thing it is,
and always will be. 
 

“Hello, river”, I say,
“good to see you again,
for the first time.”

                                   --D. W. McMillen
                                    29 March 2007
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