Huckleberry on the Merrimack

 Following the native river
 like a Huckleberry Finn
 on bicycle, I advance
 upon a paddle boat that's churning
 up the river towards the city
 of Haverhill, an old mill town
 lined with red brick buildings
 where the immigrant men and women
 worked tough leather into shoes,
 the kind that Huck would never wear
 while weaving through the wild and late
 summer foliage of purple loosestrife
 and sun-yellowed river-grass,
 splashing in the diamond-back
 waters of America,
 while knowing that the only
 territory now remaining
 was downriver past the old
 and well-kept Federalist buildings
 in a renovated Newburyport,
 and through the mouth by Plum Island
 Light, and into open stretches
 of deep and free Atlantic.

copyright 1998 Greg Perry