The Merrimac River

It was a whisper in the woods.

The Merrimac lays like a ribbon, reflecting a wanton, gibbous moon. My arms tremble, releasing as ripples, from dusk unto paled gloom. I remember Thoreau, some years ago, for the water has mem’ries to share. And on shores lies the current, washed up from a current, a cormorant morose and creased, where sudden he ceased from his tour. There certain deceased, perhaps diseased, elected he submerge once more.

For centuries, this vein has been emptied -- paid tribute to sapphire sea. Where often I’ve seized, these visions in sleep, as signal fires siren the dawn. These eyes which enfold me, sure often control me, unknowingly harrow my sight: have rested unaltered, unfaltering, here halted in halls of my sonorous kin. Collect they in pools in depths of some caverns, forgotten, sequestered from time. It’s here you once knew me, laid siege to my secrets, pressed poems right into your chest.

Do you remember the river, the ransom, the bells that tolled heavy in swells? The mouth of this river, neither hither nor thither, some slithering into the sound? A dissolved desire, the treacherous pyre, a tenebrous shoreline: abrupt? Where wind made us hallowed, all hollowed in shallows. Awaken! This scene pains for us.