“Where the Side-Currents Enter”
Around my birthday each year — which is the 24th of June — I try to write a poem. This year’s poem grew from a childhood memory of the Pemigewasset River in New Hampshire.
Pemigewasset is an Abenaki word meaning “Where the Side-Current Enters.” The title comes from that translation.
~Where The Side-Currents Enter~
When the moon was full,
I would sit on the banks of the Pemi River.
The Pemigewasset —
where the side-currents enter the flow.
To pronounce this river took my entire childhood.
A language no one speaks anymore,
preserved only by the names
of rivers and lakes in the Northeast.
Now a highway shadows the river,
as though speed could keep pace
with water that remembers another tongue.
Between Franconia Notch and the place of my birth,
the river descends over waterfalls,
passing cascades close to where my mother was born.
It drops over Livermore Falls,
tumbling over lavish gravel bars
toward Boston.
I still remember the drifting surfaces of glittering light.
The river laughs;
it looks at me with a thousand eyes —
green,
white,
bloodstone crystal,
sky-blue.
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After all these years,
the memory holds.
And for a time,
it allows me to veer elsewhere.
The gentler Baker River ran behind my house,
slipping east beneath the tracks
where we laid down copper pennies
for the trains to flatten.
It was another hidden current destined for the Pemi,
spilling its banks
in the early spring thaw
to swamp the fields —
only to freeze into solid glass
overnight.
I would open the cellar door
to a frozen,
crystal-clear waterscape.
Lacing up my skates,
I stepped into an ethereal,
untouchable presence.
I skated over the fields for miles,
far enough from the river
to be safe,
lost in pristine beauty.
Looking through the deep,
mirrored ice,
into fathomless depths
impossible to measure,
I saw dream-like grasses.
Only to find a matrix sodden
with the unreachable wisdom
that my subconscious
could never forget.
June 23, 2026
