Muhheakantuck

.
The river that flows both ways
runs through my house

Sometimes called paradox
—called Muhheakantuck by the Lenape
who knew that reversals of time
are not unusual,
just often misunderstood by we-
who-walk-away-from-understanding

The river that flows both ways
has two sources

one in front and one behind.  It flows from
two horizons and meets here
in the middle turbulently sometimes
but not always —only when I speak with
forked tongue. At all other times it
comes together silently as one

The river that flows both ways
is a god with two faces

—antipodal from beginning to end
Janus, like Vishnu, drifts upon his raft
into the past and future at once
remembering and hoping

The river that flows both ways
is a mirror

whose face is a nexus as Alice knew
by walking through— call it Paradox,
a town, a place I lived once
in the time before this

The river that flows both ways
has nothing to do with imagination
or poetic conceits

The river that flows both ways
really falls from a high place

is caught by tides
and carried back into estuaries

The river that flows both ways
flows through my house;

like the Lenape
I call it

Muhheakantuck

by Jim Culleny
May 27, 2010

—“Muhheakantuck (“river that flows both ways”) is a tidal estuary that we know today as the Hudson River. For thousands of years, it has defined the lives of the humans who have come into contact with its waters, wetlands, bluffs and uplands.” —