Water Colors

There is an impression of a river, an idea of life, so pervasive a vision that one solitary word reflects it.  It appears in many, many languages almost unaltered from the earliest accounts of Homer, thence Herodotus, Shakespeare and a clear flow to today. Assuredly those peoples of pre-history evoked this name, like a god.  It was probably brought by the Romans to the Thames of the misty islands of our language and was certainly used with derision at those cowherds who did not share their straight ways.  But I meander, though my course still leads to the sea.  Why change the name to Menderes?…what does that mean?  Guess its nobodies business but the Turks …

Most live today as most have through all time, by the bank of a river.  The influence of that river may not be as clearly articulated as the Meander but the character of the people is no less a reflection in the waters of their river.  It is something in the water, as is said.

Our nation seems centered from east to west on the Mississippi.  At Memphis it is the river of deep tenderness. And the Missouri, so mighty at Kansas City, just keeps rollin’ on.  Though the confluence is at Cairo, the broad Ohio’s Queen City is Cincinnati.  I was born there and feel the water within me. It is deep and wide that river.  As the wild forested Allegany contributes to it, so, from field and farm, does the brown muddy Wabash and the descriptively named Big Muddy. The Miami, of my childhood and lost innocence, plays its part as well.  The power and drowned dreams, the Tennessee, and its lakes of mans creation flows west.  It is so different than the Pearl, congenial and quietly southern, though not picayune.  On further reflection the White does not seem so scandalous.

 This way in the nation’s heart is fed too on wheat of the Kansas at Manhattan. Other great prairie rivers are fed from pure mountain streams, the Canadian born of mother Cimarron for one.  But not the divisive Red that splits Texas nor the Dakota’s Red the one that joins Canada and us like a bandage, they are of the high plains alone.  Cache la Poudre would seem Quebecois but spills down mountains steep to the North Platte and is the milk of Kearney. There on the very bosom one can feel the surge.

 I can see why Cambridge is on the Charles.  It makes sense. Though which is it, the Stony or the Millstone that banks Princeton reputation?  To learn to fly as raptor is pursued on the Monument and near the Escambia is Gulf Breeze for an equal purpose.  A sail on the Thames and a summer swim in the Severn prepares the nautical to avoid the tentacles of the Man-of –War.  The Choptank would be as bad but is our oyster shucked by ol’ black women without scholastic endeavor.  Some looking down their noses from the drowned Seekonk have said the same of the Quinipiak.  Equally notable to all these would be the San Francisquito and none more apt than the berserk Wildcat.

 The tenacious are to be found on the Penobscot and I have found some on the Housatonic Hackensack, and East too.  My darkest adversary moved to the Westport but was carried by his Taunton, I think like the greed that drove the master’s of Fall River’s past.  The Rappahannock may symbolize an indifferent greed as did the coal mines of the far west Roanoke not so different than the Connecticut in subjugation. When they met on the Shenandoah so many years ago their differences flowed in blood and righted an injustice to be found on the Mobile and Savannah as well.

 Tenacity would be less than descriptive of dogged greed of those who followed golden Yukon.  In general that pain was self inflicted and less evil ‘till the advent of hydraulic mining.

 The most enamoring are those mystically endowed with man before our colonial history.  The Susquehanna, Delaware, Chattahoochee and Mohawk conjure images of primeval forests and harmony, nobility and lithic technology.  The same can be said with a harsher view of the Rio Pecos, Grande and San Juan.   I wonder how they’d be if named in their native tongue, perhaps less like the Animas and its filling of crossed souls though I have seen the ghosts who walk there too, or venomous like the Gila biting after a mountain storm?  The Brooks and its grizzly beasts confirm that the harmony may have been illusionary.

 It is not incongruous that the Salt led to the Phoenix though a Mormon might answer it is the Jordon flowing into the salt that is the rebirth.  But these are the manifestations.  What of the flow of the Mojave nearly unseen in desolation and the Kern dried and blowing in the wind or the San Gabriel encased in concrete. 

 Some rivers reflect enterprise like the Hudson’s spires and the St. Clair.  Some reflect vibrancy in cottonwoods against the odds like the Green twisting in red rock monuments. 

Some are used for reflection by great men who walk the Potomac.  Some are color like the Colorado and Sacramento with many cultures, visages and elevations.

 Some rivers are frozen amidst their own hue an indescribable crystal blue and crash to the sea, Ailik.  Some of those, Matanuska and Susitna, too, turn water first so clear as to appear molten silver gray an unrealizable paint.  Some like the Columbia say worship me.

 If the salt of the Santee is too bitter for our wounds, or the Gunnison flows too fast to grab hold, the Walker too high, the Yellowstone too remote, there is a river where the manatee play.  It is not without danger and sharp teeth.  It can be perilous to travel.  It reflects what can be found in all rivers and what all rivers can bring to us.  Its name is Peace.

 It is said there are many rivers to cross as we meander through life, and, it is said our time is a river and the river is life.  Some see an obstacle in the course, a lack of clarity.  Others peer through the reflection of themselves on the moving surface as they sit at the riverside and see the water colors on the way to the sea.

Matanuska To the Sea