Abstract Associations #006
A conversation in poetic verses
Alewife —
A bridge was built to move freight across the swift moving current. Steel was cooked to make it look like the sun requires a mirror. The sky does not visibly age (father takes his ease). The river, between footings and spans, also seems as young as in the time of the alewife, when what land there was, was as dumb as Job. A bridge was built to make freight the current moving swift. And in a square on the other side of a rotary with full view of the blinking tower, geese and egrets drop feathers without a further thought. Spines dampen first, then the barbules. The river tells the sky it can ignore (not that it should) this steel toy, built of a child who never knew the alewife. A river built itself but in the shadow of what. Night alone (the sky again). Actually, it’s as Bishop said: ‘the water seemed suspended above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones.’ Yet, rocks have no feet, so how does the land carve water into ribbons, rivulets like Merrimack and Mystic. Or, mother, are we not each of us part of some giant fish where stones and water run between scales, seeking either mouth or tail.
*The line quoted is from ‘At the Fishhouses’ by Elizabeth Bishop.
©2025 Jeremy Nathan Marks
[The Reply]
Mead Refuge —
Laurentide ice sheet glaciation
Meltwater carved basin formations
—All points of Mead origination
Sediment blanket, outwash plains
Wetland, drumlin, kettle, moraine
Unintentional rhymes of land’s creation
Establishing deposition
Dual nature land depression
The land always was and will forever remain
Long after humans impose their reign, such
Meager forces inflicting change
Europeans forced desecration
Natives resisted as a unified nation
The land cried, her body maimed
How dare we humans suppose suppositional
Land drained for agricultural profit
—Earth stood steadfast
Stubborn soil banishing dreams
—Earth stood steadfast
Refuge born, conservational hand
The Mead, a gift, a returning of home
Varied wetland restoration
Hardwood and aspen forestation
Migratory diversification
Abundant wildlife populations
Human arrogance wounds eternally
Intricate imbalances disrupted unlearnedly
Lessons in nature’s own stratification
Requires of humans much deeper transformations
If being is belonging what separates our spirit from the soul?
Perhaps the answers breathe within the wild's reclamations.
I like how these both speak across registers, one whispering through rivers, the other testifying through wetlands. Same ache, different voice, beautifully done!
Awesome piece. Exactly what I’ve been craving to read! And from some of my favourite people on Substack.
Shoutout to Jeremy Marks: my fellow Jew. I really appreciated your reading.
And Sylvia, damn! Your poem got me glitching out, somersaulting. La Crème de la crème! Your voice sang this piece together.
And commodification, that exploitation. Hope to see a day where people live in unity with real need, instead of capitalistic-market-conditioning where the price we pay for something isn’t the real face value when there’s people on the other side, hands and backs hurting to provide us with our low priced commodities. Agriculture/horticulture, to warehouse and construction - especially in poor countries - these workers have been the fertiliser, the cow manure for the growth of the Industrial Revolution.
I know it’s not a lot but I try and buy as much produce as possible from local organic growers, as well as source my clothes from local vintage stores. It’s the little things. The more we stop supporting these big corporations the easier it will be to let these smaller businesses thrive that care about our wellbeing.