John Gould Fletcher

From “Down the Mississippi”

August 22–27, 1915

DULL masses of dense green,

The forests range their sombre platforms.

Between them silently, like a spirit,

The river finds its own mysterious path.

Loosely the river sways out, backward, forward,

Always fretting the outer side;

Shunning the invisible focus of each crescent,

Seeking to spread into shining loops over fields:

Like an enormous serpent, dilating, uncoiling,

Displaying a broad scaly back of earth-smeared gold;

Swaying out sinuously between the dull motionless forests,

As molten metal might glide down the lip of a vase of dark bronze.

While this, the steamboat slowly drifting out upon it,

Seems now to be floating not only outwards but upwards—

In the flight of a petal detached and gradually moving skyward

Above the pink explosion of the calyx of the dawn.