Claudio Salvucci: On Neshaminy's Banks

On Neshaminy's Banks

Metal-made vessel, what do you in your youth,
know of these wilds and whence you arise?
Your years are yet few of working this stream,
of whittling eddies from stock steady currents.
Gallons roll by and as quick become gone,
new fluid in racing, the old flow displacing.

What drives such a drop from Tinicum’s springs
to join, conjoin with others born humble,
To tumble commingled down Delaware’s channel
to rumble in falls and skitter in rapids,
To fumble for seas, silted and salty
and crest and roar on Atlantian shores?

For so do these waves wash whole to their goal,
through hills and in valleys, gathering more.
And the lands where they wind, laureled and pined,
are rich with the bellows of men and of beast:
the least of cells, ephemeral weeds and stately trees,
of turtle and crow, squirrel and doe.

Of late did the kin of the great apes arrive,
and thrive, though naked, through cold,
molding the skins of their animal kin, and claiming
the flame for their own, roamed wood and plain.
From rain-fed stems were their shelters’ frames taken,
beneath them they feasted and fell into sleep.

By these tawny waters, dawn-daughters rested,
with babe upon breast they came, and remained;
from twin springs nursed, drinking their fill,
and though were not first to capture in sound
a name for this ground, taught it to colonists newly landed,
and handed that name to lasting fame.

Great sachems gave counsel in shade such as this:
famed Tamanend, the affable, settlers’ friend,
Teedyuscung, great chieftain, king of the lands,
and proprietor Penn, ever benevolent.
Among forest folk they rose, those most noble of men,
and spring-nourished settled, on Neshaminy’s banks.

Even, o vessel, the curve of your prow,
stern metal molded to the beak of your bow,
inherits its line from more primitive times.
For once no ore was mined by men,
nor poured; only products of pitch and of pine:
hollowed hulled boats kept fishers afloat.

Were they not of your race, those transports famed,
that lay here encamped and on a winter’s night sortie—
a historic nativity when the very fight floundered—
ferried through thickness of ice and of cold,
who boldly delivered Washington’s soldiers
to Trenton and triumph in storied defiance?

Who knows the first who peopled this place,
what race in their visage, what sound in their tongue?
Whose bow-strings were drawn, and wherefore were sprung?
What tales to their children were whispered and sung?
Found, they will not be, for years have concealed them,
and will not reveal them; not even for friends.

New legs now tend the bends of this land;
with new names appended, new hands may toil.
But hills are not loyal to royals nor friends,
and rust rocks will green and round of their own,
unknowing of deeds and founders and names,
of titles, of settlers, of wanderers’ claims.

Yet we, o vessel, who pass here in haste,
who waste with the years must savor their taste.
We hold fast to our breasts the stories of old,
and speak them, and sing them, and let them be told,
and emboldened by death we refuse to forget
the tales well regaled us by fast ailing breath.

For you and I year-borne will vanish like rill-water,
drips in a rivulet, mingled and gone,
while long on the loam-land are histories hoarded,
recorded by homelings whose few days are shorted.
Our earth’s flanks outlast the flow in her channels,
of man and his annals on Neshaminy’s banks.

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