what a hard time
the Hudson River has had
trying to get to the sea
it seemed easy enough to
rise out of Tear of
the Cloud and tumble
and run in little skips
and jumps draining
a swamp here and
there acquiring
streams and other smaller
rivers with similar
longings for the wide
imagined water
suddenly
there’s Poughkeepsie
except for its spelling
an ordinary town but
the great heaving
ocean sixty miles away is
determined to reach
that town every day
and twice a day in fact
drowning the Hudson River
in salt and mud
it is the moon’s tidal
power over all the waters
of this earth at war with
gravity the Hudson
perseveres moving down
down dignified
slower look it has
become our Lordly Hudson
hardly flowing
and we are
now in a poem by the poet
Paul Goodman be quiet heart
home home
then the sea
- Grace Paley
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Poetry - Schmoetry. Stuff that rhyme and shit.
