Between Two Rivers

In Hudson, New York.

Say its name enough times, as my parents 
have said it going southbound on the Northway, and the town 
takes on a strange charm that the river—sharing its name 
with he who thought he could find China for the Dutch—will not hold
a hundred more miles downstate: sun-baked brick storefronts, hometown heroes, 
single traffic lights, independent galleries, 
sidewalk benches. Down the main drag
and up the stairs leading to the village
park you’ll find what the English
mistook for their passage to glory
and riches beyond any monarch’s waking dreams:
a wide unmapped river flanked by forest,
the river now a shade darker than it used
to be probably, the forest no greener
than I imagine it was when he and his
men spied it from their ship. 
Describing it to you as I am 
now—in these ninety degrees of summer heat, in 
the ambient torpor of the village air—I reach for 
the precisions I always use to situate 
things here: yes, it’s New York, but not 
the city; yes, it’s American, but
hardly America; no, we’re not from
here, but we—descendants of those European 
explorers’ eastern fantasies, now walking
westward to the river—have seen it all before.