Invocation at the Merrimack

And now I take a tongue into your mud, 

into your syringe and soda bottle banks,

to beg your braided silk, your Pennacook 

ikwe, your sliding tar of snake, your mouth 

of stones, your clavicle  

         of roil and moan, 

your lover ghosts thrown from Pawtucket Falls, 

your whitewater of bread and roses, 

         your creak 

of locks and lifts, your leap from burning windows, 

your fished-out crib of salmon and shiv, of shell

casings and shad, alewife and boosted tires,

your cradle 

         of flywheel, of factory, your mill 

girl offering, your doffers, your biddies, your boom 

and your busted. Penitent palmed I stand 

in this, your sun tussling dawn, to call a song.

My river, roll your blueblack big hips under 

the oxidized iron of cantilever and cable, 

deluge and slip bridge ribs and sing between 

the redbrick and brackish heft of textile mills 

turned art galleries with crack alleys. 

         You, 

bender of flashboard pins, come 

         sing to me, 

sluice me, double back and seduce me to 

your flood, tenor me down to your Irish blood 

canals, your Greek restaurant ghettos, 

fluorescent Cambodian groceries, chunk heeled 

Brazilian bakeries,       

         your cobblestones 

exposed to sell some rheumy history. 

Bones old and broken of flesh, in sack and ash,

I call a song. 

         You ferried me home, now drink                         

and spit me out where city hall has crouched

inside downtown’s diverticula,

down to the fountain at JFK plaza where 

my brother was suckered by a kid I wouldn’t 

hit back. 

         And there, just one of ten police stations, 

Pollard library, and across Arcand Ave, 

Lowell High, its field house named after

our grandfather, 

         the columned Masonic temple,

the bring your own wine Viet Thai, and bars 

and bars and bars, one for every St. Anne’s, 

Immaculate, and St. Patrick’s. 

         In your 

hydraulic drop prayers are tossed like toasts 

to tilted pints. There, here, my palms unfold.

         Give willow to me against 

my flooded nights, against my broken rites.

So you flow down and roll stones old river, 

and moor me here for what I am and not. 

Wake my song and pluck me to your pulse. 

I’ll stay down in your valley, 

         drink your ink 

of water and dream myself 

         back into you. 

Make me small again, roll me in your lap, 

your mud, your moon lit blood. 

         Supplicated, 

by the greasy vents of a train car diner, I beg

your lip of water 

         to whisper

 

[This poem, and others inspired by and relating to the Merrimack and our region, can be found in Matt W. Miller’s latest collection, “Tender the River,” published by Texas A&M University Press. Please consider supporting local, independent bookstores if you wish to purchase a copy.]