Where Rivers Lazily Roam
"The streams are my veins."
--Constance La France
Along the shores of the Ohio, I now call my home
My heart rests in its origins, for there I was born
Where New River and Gauley River lazily roam,
Making the old Kanawha, from which I was torn.
These “streams are my veins,” I will never scorn
Adventure-seething rivers ever “white with foam”*
Old and slow-moving, rich in beauty ne’er shorn
Along the shores of the Ohio, I now call my home.
The Kanawha flows into the mighty Ohio a-foam
Meandering through mountains time has worn
Where, as a boy, I photographed in Kodachrome
My heart rests in its origins, for there I was born.
Along shores of the New River, I played my horn
Seems music was always a part of my genome,
The languid rivers, with slow jazz I could adorn,
Where New River and Gauley River lazily roam.
These rivers cut through the rich fertile loam
Of my breadth and being, now aged, careworn
I have the mountain rivers’ motivating syndrome
Making the old Kanawha from which I was torn.
Running through my veins, melancholia forlorn
Surely embedded in my genetic chromosome,
Fed by the rolling rivers on a December morn,
Living by the mighty Ohio, I play my trombone
Along the shores.
Written August 1, 2022
*Quote from Irving Berlin's "God Bless America"
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