My River

My new home is on a river with wide sweeping views: the Rhode in Edgewater, Maryland, to be precise. Right now the water has a little chop to it, and it is gray, because the day is overcast.

We’ve just moved in and find ourselves transfixed by the amazing sunsets to the south, as well. Nearly every night, whenever the cloud cover cooperates, Brad and I watch them from our deck in companionable silence.

Usually, we see a fiery ball of deep red, sinking into the horizon, its colors streaking through the atmosphere. Its last light shines down over the boats that speed by to get back to their docks before the light fades and dusk descends. At night, the sailboats anchored near the opposite shore turn on their mast lights and it looks like a miniature city across the mirror of the  water.

All this brings me to share a poem by Langston Hughes, a black poet of great renown; he captures not only the magic of rivers during centuries past, but also creates a panegyric to people of African origin throughout history.

For Hughes, the river stands as a symbol of infinity, geographical awareness, and the epitome of the human soul. He wrote it in 1922, using the word “Negro” in the title: it was a time when political correctness had not yet become an issue and yet the poem delves, lyrically, into the heart of the black experience. And it speaks more generally to the way an individual can become one with the river, as well, and how the water moves us spiritually as we make our way through life.  

Yours,

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.