Song of the Waters

On a star-lit night beside the Susquehanna, a poet leans close to the water and listens for what the river might be whispering. This is not a poem of dramatic action but of profound stillness - that rare moment when the boundary between listener and landscape dissolves, and nature seems to speak directly to anyone willing to hear. Graydon captures the particular magic of nighttime by a moving body of water: the stars trembling in the current, the ancient persistence of water making its slow journey to the Chesapeake Bay, the smallness and largeness of being a human witness to something that has flowed since long before we arrived and will continue long after. The verse moves with the river itself - gentle, rolling, meditative. For readers who find solace in waterways, in the sounds of night, in the idea that even the smallest stream carries accumulated stories, this poem offers a quiet invitation to stop, to pay attention, to hear what the waters have always been saying.