Long Ohio river Poems
Long Ohio river Poems. Below are the most popular long Ohio river by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Ohio river poems by poem length and keyword.
Gentle rolling hills, valley plots,
nothing regimented,
graves not in ordered row but placed
among natural features.
It’s beautiful here, especially in the Fall.
The Maples are tall and burning bright.
There are new graves among the old.
I thank them all for being here before me.
Not that I could afford
to be planted here. Even the Maples
are too rich for my death.
No, I will be ashes in the Ohio river,
more befitting my redneck soul.
I imagine the fishes will be pleased,
the abandoned truck tires
accommodating my swirling dust.
If the shore weeds and cattails catch me,
then I will linger until their own death
releases my essence once more.
Eventually I will be transformed
after generations of sprouting dreams -
maybe into a Maple seed.
A seed to be planted in these same
pleasant Autumnal acres.
Gently sloping emerald hills,
Old, gray fences brightened by daffodils,
Majestic trees ready to burst into bloom,
Strangers smiling and waving at me.
That’s my Kentucky.
Gleaming horses peacefully grazing
Behind white fences,
Old, leaning barns speaking of tobbacco and history,
Spring peepers voicing joy by the pond,
Young groundhogs nibbling on new growth,
That’s my Kentucky.
Forsythia blooming against an old log cabin,
Surrounded by ancient maples in red spring splendor,
And the weathered schoolhouse nearby,
boardered by a split rail fence covered in ivy.
That’s my Kentucky.
The quietly rolling Ohio river carries coal
away from these hills in barges,
While a bald eagle turns wide circles above,
Soaring on air curents invisible to me.
That’s my Kentucky.
Along the creek watercress and forget-me-nots are flourishing,
A blue heron stands statue-still on the glittering water’s egdge.
The ancient mill is nestled between the wooded hills,
where the sparkling creek works the creaky wheel.
That’s my Kentucky
Softly swaying cedar trees line roads like tin soldiers,
Decked in fresh, spring green coats,
And underneath velvety violets and glorious bright dandelions
celebrate their life with happy faces.
That’s my Kentucky.
He sat on this patch of turf,
and if not this exact place a piece of a place nearby.
Naturally, I try to feel his companionship.
Did he write a line of poetry on this small island
or was he simply being Walt Whitman,
honored guest,
a person he hardly recognized from his youth?
I feel his old bones not his youthful step
but also his long poems
as they ride Ohio river currents
at ease with the next slow bend,
or some quick kink and churn of its history.
I imagine his hand on the ground,
it heaves my body up from a deep grass
and quilts me to a terrain
where fingers meet on a shared wrist
a place where heron wings beat.
I feel the mutuality of crossed roads,
the cadence of shore eddies
as they unbutton a coat
he left draped over a rail of this wooden jetty.
In my mind I travel the open road.
Whitman, Frost, Thoreau,
they got here and there before.
I also used to trek and track
there and back;
now I have this chair
and when I can
I place ii in a circle of sunlight,
eyes projecting scenes on eyelids.
I find it easier to slide upwards
to mountaintops this way.
There I can listen to temple bells,
ringing their soft golden chimes
above a mist-laced jungle morning,
or walk a Great Wall
to watch the sun set over Mongolia.
Now a river boat docks at my feet,
I ride the Ohio river
maybe as far as the Mississippi
Mark Twain at the wheel.
Then turn to the open road once more
for a homeward journey,
my chair creaking
as I traipse over lands low and high
to bask now in a backyard
as daylight lengthens.
Ohio corn sways to a hobo wind,
while I,
still hearing the roaring of oceans
orbiting a sitting Buddha,
at peace
with all roads taken or not.
It’s Maysville Kentucky’s own,
Laurie Ginn writing her poetry.
Snuggled down in the hills,
There’s no other place to be.
With an active happy life,
Her heart overflows with joy.
She loves our Heavenly Father,
And has two 6’2” teen boys.
She has a love for nature,
Being in the midst of conifers.
Hiking deep in the woods,
Is a spiritual experience to her.
Sitting outside under the stars,
Illuminated by the fire’s burning logs.
Listening to the beautiful music,
Created by the crickets and frogs.
No on can leave the campfire,
Until the fire burns out naturally.
For she can stop dead in the road,
Amazed by the beauty of a tree.
With a freedom to love and give,
She aids church and disturbed kids.
And when her music is turned up,
To turn it down she forbids.
Her words flow like the Ohio River,
Poetry Soup showcases her skills.
Her inspiration is all around her,
Nestled in the Kentucky hills.
________________________
This poem is for Laurie Ginn,
a fellow souper and friend.
For her suppotive comments...
Ever heard of the beautiful Ohio?
The writer in me wants you to know -
River life has its anecdotes
My granny, a German immigrant,
mastered that river in dinghy boats
to attend a Lutheran church.
I've crossed its waves on a raft that floats.
The writer in me wants you to know -
My father conquered the Ohio
on a ferryboat two times a day.
Except... when April rains closed the floodwall.
Then his carpool drove seventy miles one way
to cross on the next nearest bridge
in not-so-nearby Owensville Bay.
The Ohio River changes its flow.
The writer in me wants you to know.
My grandpa walked it in the depth of winter's freeze;
my grandkids explore its fossils in summer's drought.
Swimming it upstream is not an easy breeze
but its muddy shores hold childhood treasure.
It's where we teens met with our main squeeze.
August 14, 2021
Sponsor Constance La France
Contest Name Your Favorite Rhyme Poem in August 2021
A bottom land
where green is thread through
with a trailing mud.
A late fruited decay seeps and smears
these low meadow pasture.
Pot-bellied dewdrops hang,
strung upon spawny strings.
Here toadstools labor to open
upon cadaverous stems.
Tractor ruts have churned
a common lea into
sully and mire.
Waders squelch, stirring
drenched odors.
A slick grass slopes
here into oily shallows.
Beyond, the Ohio river shimmers bright
as it swiftly flows onward
delivering journeys
taken between moon and sun.
If you stand here splay-footed
and boot rooted,
you may catch a Great Blue Heron,
ascending,
its wings catching fire
within first shafts of golden light.
An illumination of a destination
reached by this marshy dock
of backwater day-peep.
The bears are back.
Where?
O somewhere – not here.
There are parts of Ohio
where the bears go.
Where did they come from?
Maybe a Ranger took a bear cub
from a dead mother,
brought it to a place
where a bear could grow,
here in Ohio.
There are more now.
How?
Maybe a few bears wandered
into the State,
maybe they crossed the Ohio river
over there
you know south of here.
Wow bears in Ohio.
Yea I heard it on the radio.
I heard there are wolves
roaming the empty shopping Malls.
Where?
Over there,
where we lost hope.
No kidding?
What kind of wolves?
The ones at your door.
Yea, we had them before.
Well there back
most everywhere.
I guess they followed the bears.
Small rolling hills, valley plots,
nothing regimented,
graves not scattered, but placed
among natural features.
It’s beautiful here
especially in the Fall.
The Maples are tall and burning bright.
There are new graves among the old.
I thank all of them
for being here before me.
Not that I could afford
to be planted here. Even the Maples
are too rich for my death.
No, I will be ashes
thrown
into the Ohio river.
I imagine the fishes will be pleased
to see me,
the abandoned truck tires
easily accommodating my
swirling dust.
If the shore weeds and cattails catch me,
then I will linger until their own death
releases my essence once more.
Down the slow waters,
in chewed, dribbles and drabs will I go
until I seep within a slick of mud,
just spice for mites and grubs
into the Mississippi.
Days bleed their green entrails into
the empty hulks of passing years.
A future, nourished by the ear bones
of all beings who listened, and once heard,
of the everlasting
opens up into a perfect unison.
I reappear transformed
by generations of sprouting dreams
into a Maple seed.
A seed now planted in these same
pleasant Autumnal acres.
Here, I will grow tall and beautiful;
as a many limbed arboreal fire.
Curious ghosts in their mausoleums
will spy into the Fall daylight
to watch my leaves, turn, and grow bright –
so flame red, so burning bright.
The river holds within it
a bygone starlight,
as if all that was
will be its movement
into tomorrow.
By that ancient glow
long drowned ghosts dream.
I also imagine those dreams travelling
inside my own alien rivering.
The river is a dreamscape.
I saw its mesmeric trance once,
saw it beneath the shadow of Kentucky
where the ripple of a swimming moon
fetched up on chalky reeds.
There beneath a night-shine
its movement seeped deep
into the tendinous silt of my living.
I saw my coming and going
in nights tumbling flood.
Ohio river:
you sky smeared freshet
of soft filtering meadows;
on your muddy gleams
let me pass on by -
star riddled.