The River Remembers

A Poem for the Dan River and the People Along Its Banks

Before roads acquired their names,
before bridges spanned my body,
I was already moving

through the Sauratown hills,
stone beneath me,
sky gathered in my depths.

The Saura knew these waters.

They fished my currents,
cultivated the dark earth,
raised children beneath these trees.

They understood
what we so easily forget:

water is never merely water.

The mountains still bear their name.

Others came.

Forests yielded to fields.
Tobacco lifted toward the sun.

Along my banks,
enslaved hands worked an earth
they could not claim,

while freedom remained
a distant shore.

I carried their grief.
I carried their songs.

Perhaps at dusk
someone entrusted a prayer
to my current.

Water remembers.

Generations passed.

Church bells sounded across the hills.
Hymns mingled with birdsong.

Some entered my waters
and vanished beneath the surface,

then rose again
into astonished light.

For a moment,
I became Jordan:

threshold,
promise,
beginning.

Still, I moved.

Past Westfield,
Hanging Rock,
Danbury and Moratock,

bearing rain and leaf,
sorrow and prayer,
all that refuses to disappear.

And now along my banks,
Danbury is discovering
new languages of attention.

Clay turns beneath practiced hands.
Brushes follow the contours of light.
Music wanders through open doors.

A camera receives
what the hurried eye overlooks.

A poem gathers
at the edge of silence.

Above it all,
Hanging Rock keeps its ancient vigil,

summoning us back
to stone,
water,
wind,

to the elemental world
from which we have never
truly departed.

Some walk the trails.
Some enter my current.

Others simply sit beside me
until the clamor within them
begins to loosen.

Perhaps this is why
we have always sought rivers:

to recover something
the world persuades us
to forget.

That we belong
to what preceded us
and what will remain.

Stone.
Rain.
Breath.

Beauty.
Blood.
Memory.

I carry them all.

Come down to the Dan.

Stand where water
encounters stone.

Listen.

You may hear
the Saura in the name of the hills,

an old hymn
lingering among the trees,

the measured dip of a paddle,

a child laughing downstream,

a heron lifting
into morning.

And deeper still,

beneath history,
beneath horror,
beneath Alleluias,

beneath language,
beneath everything
we have presumed to name,

water returning to water,

the earth’s ancient prayer
moving through us

on its way
home.