Proud River

Roll on in your majestic soulful grandeur,

Fill and spill your uncounted tributaries,

your hidden slews overhung with moss,

adventures awaiting among ancient slave banks,

tangled and brambled hunting holes once habitats.

Mystically drawing those who know the lay of the land.

 

 Roll on with your deep dark secrets of stately Colonial Plantation

life on high ground, sprawling green lawns, spotting white-washed

slave cabins but stone for rice mills and steps pounded down into the hill.

 Men lost in your depths-women and children left alone, Those

well to do and having nothing, forever conflicted at your beautiful danger. 

 

Roll on our grand river, heritage and hermitage to generations

Proud tribal canoe pass, Crown’s explorers’ gateway, Kings Grant

planters ship way, Many Waters spillway down from Yawhanna,

Pee Dee, up Wachesaw way, the Black, bottomless its said.

Merging in currents rushing deep, thunderous, strong and good

ever towards the bay into the sea. Forever gone.

Photographer: Tanya Ackerman