Appointed Historians of Dutchess County

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My fathers were all rivermen before me, and I Was born in that small house you see Clinging to the rock, looking down on the cool water. The first sounds that I heard in my baby crib Must have been its lingering, slapping at the stone. Oh, a force the river has to talk, fed From the Adirondack springs so clear and clean I could count the pebbles in the runs, and with its feet Buried down in the vasty salt; tides move even here, Bringing the great striped bass beside our docks To surprise our string-fishermen who come at night For eels. Tows of wheat and pork and Rondout coal Are everyday upon our river, and the great log rafts Drift down, yield of the upper wilderness. In my young days, I was cabin boy on the old sloops; I knew them all, the color-banded birds. The Mohegan was my ship, and the swift Huntress Out of Lower Landing. I can see them now, those dancing sails Come gliding through the reaches, up past Point-No-Point. Do not pity to see me here in my older days, Captain of your horse-ferry Across to that low cluster of buildings Where the road to New Paltz comes down from the Ulster hills, With a crew of one lout to cast the ropes, And patient Josey to plod us over on her turn-wheel. Our river: I see the sturgeon's arching leap, Shedding drops from his horny back like crystal beads, And see the morning mist rise up from the leaden water While the village still sleeps along the hill. If it's true, as that wise man of the Indies told me, White-bearded like the Christ he was, That for our sins in this life, we must serve another, As penalty, in a lower form as animals, Then for that man I brained two days off the coast of Chile, And saw his body slide into the flat, unruffled depths, And for my folly with those island girls Who hung on our anchor chains, Their long, black hair floating around them like water-witches, Let me come back as an eagle, And look for me there to south, where we circle by the Highlands, Finding our sport in the airy drafts of the Wind Gate.

He came among us in the night, cold in death From a passing sloop, On our shore where we found him in the morning, So we buried him on this promintory, Facing out to whence he came, a white head-stone to mark him, Purchased with the silver that weighted in his pocket, That we tend as he were one of ours, The stranger within our gates.

In Paraclete's bookstore, where we gather In our forums of the day, one of the company Was a schoolmate of Van Buren, when the great event Of their day was to walk to the river-shore And throw skipping stones in contest; little Van, Who has come the long, twisting road to the Presidency, And Kinderhook, just come few miles above us, Is known in the national papers as a president's home. Our own best chance had been much earlier, When our Tallmadge, wending close to the inner circle, Wagered everything on a single speech, and lost the cast. With the new counties in the west opening up, We see our chances dwindle; the raw, new West Would give presidents, too, now that Virginia's Hold was broken. Still, it's a teasing thought That a future president might be twining his daily life With ours on Main Street; he might, just now, be turning Into his office in Lawyer's Row down by the courthouse, Where he reads law and suffers correction by the senior Without reply, biting his tongue, Seeming to agree with all that is said, learning his lesson, To bend with the wind. Here, coming into the bookstore with us, I see the young son of the New York family That has come to the estate just north of the village, Driven down by the gray-haired tutor In the jaunting cart whose lacquered wicker-work, I glimpse at the hitching-post, And as they leaf through the text-books they need For the summer reading course in Latin, I seek, in the smooth, unlined face of the young pupil, For some hint of an iron captain, Unspoiled and not pampered by those breakfasts on the terrace, Where servants hurry with the cloth-wrapped dishes, With silver covers and the twined roses of the family Shield, Warm from the kitchen of the great-house And I try to read an ambition That will not be satisfied with a token gold piece For attendance at trustee meetings of the bank and Railroad boards, And walks on gravel paths that wind among the trees From thirty countries. To read destiny is hard, but I watch on, Intently, like a heron on one leg, For the signs That political lightning will strike on our village.