The FIVE RIVERS project is a collaboration instigated by North Country potter Paul Davison. "I need fifteen poems; three for each of the five major rivers in the county--you in?" "I'm your boy." (When it comes to art--just say "yes.")    This ongoing project calls for the (short) poems to be imprinted from handset type onto various fired and unfired wheelthrown clay vessels, which will be launched, placed, sunk or dissolved into the respective rivers for which they were made--a kind of votive offering to the spirit of water. On the Summer Solstice, 1996, the first unfired vessel bearing the haiku Raquette I was set adrift to dissolve into the Raquette (photo at left). The poems are written for the following rivers in St. Lawrence County, New York: the Raquette, the Grasse, the Oswegatchie, the St. Regis and the St. Lawrence. Two of the vessels were included in a display at the Gibson Gallery at SUNY Potsdam in Potsdam, New York.    One poem written for the project, The Family Plot, proved too long to stamp on a pot. It spawned a separate collaboration with North Country singer and songwriter, Barbara Heller Burns, who has written music to the traditional ballad-style poem. An audio file of Barbara performing the song can be found opposite the poem.
Dale Hobson
Raquette I All through Stone Valley snowmelt hammers sandstone flat. Where does my rage go?
St. Regis I: The Family Plot I left my lover 'cross the river in a house all weathered silver by the storms bred on the mountains all around the flowered uplands where she grazed the brindled cattle 'til her love returned from battle in the swelter of Manassas or was lost beneath its grasses. So she tethered 'cross the river a cedar dory weathered silver softly washed by half moon shimmer for my midnight ferry over. From a shelf beside the woodbin hung my slippers cut from doeskin and a lamp of scented tallow for my weary feet to follow. Now my lover's weathered silver-- home I came and stayed to claim her. Here our boys will lay us under 'til they join us come hereafter.	North Country potter and art provacateur Paul Davison teaches art at Morristown Central School. North Country Singer/songwriter Barabara Heller Burns made a lovely ballad arrangement of The Family Plot. Listen (mp3)
Grasse I: Life Preserver	A proposed lifesaver poem in thanks for many close escapes on the water.
St. Lawrence I Drifting among the Thousand Islands, spread on the deck, an offering to the sun, I recall St. Lawrence, being roasted by pagans, said, "Turn me now; on this side, I'm done."
Oswegatchie I Oswegatchie fog-- grey-blue, the great wings rising-- whistle-boned heron.
Raquette II: Work Once named Nihanawate, "laughing water," before the millbuilders bought her power, now deer browse blackberries in the silent bed beside the great pipe where the river's hid. Though a mile downstream, after pulling her weight, the Raquette punches out at the watergate, reprieve is short from her industrious doom-- a regular succession of dam and flume from her rising on down to her ending.
St. Regis II Rounding the willowed bend, I freeze between stroke and stroke, transfixed by the full moon's path--white ash spear cast from the shoulder of Azure Mountain.
Raquette III No ripples between the islets--lean, search your face in the river's glass as long as the half light lasts, while bats hunt, skimming the water, to feed on their reflections.	Return to THE COLLABORATORY
© Dale R. Hobson. All rights reserved.