The High Hudson

High above the harbor's flow, amongst tall peaks and late snow, where the krumholtz trees will grow, to Lake Tear-In-The-Clouds I go. Up here in this rugged spot, a place explorers once sought, echoed sounds and quit thought... water spills through ancient rock. Through the wilds it will wend, by small towns it twists and bends, winter's flow and icy spend, until spring sun brings and end. Above eagles dive swiftly at trout below, swimming free. Rafters paddle frantically down channels fast and stony. Rush water, clear and cold, carved a gorge by the Blue Hole, racing river, ice-age old, through land that cannot be sold. Down-river it's not the same, where the Hudson's calm and tame, and polluted, we're to blame, but way up north it remains.