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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
SLEEPY RIVER, by H. NELSON HOOVEN
First Line: I look into your muddy waters and see the hills
Last Line: Then disappear as mist, leaving a sleepy river -- and me.
Subject(s): Rivers
First Line: I look into your muddy waters and see the hills
Last Line: Then disappear as mist, leaving a sleepy river -- and me.
Subject(s): Rivers
I look into your muddy waters and see the hills,
I follow you around the angles and the bends;
All day long your melody my dreaming fills
With soft murmurs and a promise that never ends.
These are your green banks and also my young shore,
In early childhood I grew as you went travelling by,
And as I listened I learned to love you more and more
As you told me in many a mood, of river's journey.
Here by your grasses, your high lush weeds I sit and wait,
I hear the seasons change, and you change, and the sky becomes as violet,
Even in Spring from the thunder, or in Autumn when smoke shakes
The last leaves from the sycamore and all beauty aches.
Shattered reflections of the stars at night tremble in the wake of your flood,
You hurry, you are slow, you brood and bring the aspen bud
To hang in long furrows, in tangled graces of the first Spring mood,
And you roll on triumphantly, deep and quieted.
I lie and look into your muddy waters -- and feel the sea,
I drift with you and catch the great white glacial flakes
That light the body of your broad wide way,
Then disappear as mist, leaving a sleepy river -- and me.
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