ENVIRONMENTAL Poem: When the River When Viral, by Harry Bauld

…native tribes had named the river long before Hudson’s arrival….
Mahicantuck… “river that flows two ways.” –New York State Department of
Environmental Conservation

I wish I could keep the arithmetic of loss to myself.
Somewhere below Independence Avenue in the Bronx
The Hudson mumbles into its own mouth
A passage of its two-faced history
And the sky reflects the water’s rumors in no particular order,
Cloudy syllables wheeling in an orrery
Of displaced peoples and disappearing frogs.
Remember when our masked breath flickered in the candles of evening.
The 7 p.m. huzzahs contained a hospital, critical inquiry, useless anodyne,
Simple equations left unsolved in impossible proofs.
I never sought a single paradise and now look.
As in primitive paintings, my mouth may one day open
To an asterisk of lost joys, my tongue over the lip of departure
From New York’s second-highest hill,
Droplets raining both up and down like helpless furors
Into the hum of home’s river flowing both ways at once.

Author: poetryfest

Submit your Poetry to the Festival. Three Options: 1) To post. 2) To have performed by an actor 3) To be made into a film. View all posts by poetryfest