hudson river valley
		---------------------------------------------------------

		this short river has no business
		being so wide so huge!

		the ice age hills corner it cup it
		in a marbles-playing freeze-frame sequence:
		a giant's hand moves

		it's afternoon and the blue fog floats
		hovering patching
		layering the gray still waters

		the mansions on the west bank hills ensconce in trees
		expose themselves on bold tops
		so do the psychiatric institutes hospitals
		the prisons
		corporate meeting centers retreats
		the one and the other nuclear plant
		some light stonecrushing, petrochemicalia, dredging

		but i glide away -- mid-manhattan bound
		two hours late past mid day friday:
		can't say enough about toledo forklift operations

		this river has no business:
		this river is a dream...

		what was this river and to whom
		was this river
		before america was america
		who lived here and were they
		conservatives

		strange is the hudson
		the hudson of the poughkeepsie
		of fishkill of north of yonkers

		the guy in the caf car said cops
		always hassled him in the hudson valley towns
		for the long hair for the drugs 
		he never had
		left the rich-land-and-clean-dream-cut-slut kids alone
		who had the money and...

		it's conservative man
		i could not take it man
		i went to oregon man
		i'm now back home again man

		home -- just visiting.


			Marek Lugowski
			13 April 1997
			Chicago, Illinois