“Kennebec River” for Kennebec Estuary Land Trust
by David Crews
This past fall, I found placement to work at an organic farm along the coast of Maine in a little town called Phippsburg. It was Rachel Carson’s third book in her trilogy on the seas that brought me here, and I was immediately drawn—as so many are—to the geology of the Maine coast. Here, bedrock and evergreen forest stretch all the way down to much of the shoreline. The glacial history has both carved a rugged mountain terrain and flooded much of the coast where, at the edge of the sea, one can find some incredible estuary ecosystems. An estuary is an example of an ecotone—a region of transition between biological communities—where saltwater from the sea mixes with freshwater from the river to generate a complex ecosystem in flux.
The below sequence includes separate visits to the following lands protected by Kennebec Estuary Land Trust: Merrymeeting Fields in Woolwich, Bonyun Preserve in Westport Island, Thorne Head Preserve in Bath, as well as a 170-mile trip up the Kennebec River to its source at Moosehead Lake—these places ancestral lands of Amarascoggin, Kennebec, and other Abenaki peoples. The poem includes italicized lines from Rachel Carson, Eavan Boland, and Gautama Buddha.
David Crews
Nov, 2020
Kennebec River
1
Maine has its rivers
It was only yesterday in the life of the earth that the sea
came in
She was here
filling the valleys and rising about the slopes of the hills
on these same rocks—here, at the edge of the sea
with sounds of estuarine, river, stone
Salt Pond preserve, Reid, Popham beach
the long narrow estuaries of the Kennebec, the Sheepscot,
the Damariscotta
What does it mean to be a river?
2
At the mouth of the estuary small waves unfold in both
directions of ebb and
flow into themselves
one hundred and seventy miles from Moosehead lake
here, to Fort Popham
From a distance it looks like a cistern and kayakers
row in place for exercise
below seals with big moose heads that break the surface
like whales or distant waves
then drift in the current
where the fish come—endangered anadromous fish
like the Shortnose sturgeon, Atlantic salmon
Carson writes of this
that will travel up the estuary to spawn in freshwater
A Red-necked grebe makes a way down the shoreline
will winter here along the coast with the diving
birds—buffleheads, loons, scoters, eiders
Like a sanderling I walk back along the beach
where the tide hits each step
thinking how I heard once that an oyster covers
irritants that enter the shell
with layers of secretions that eventually harden
to a pearl
3
For no two successive days is the shore line precisely
the same
My friends speak of a beach on the Maine coast—Bog
Brook cove
It is almost a ghost forest
where waves crash so hard and for so long the beach itself
is a collection of polished stones the sea returned
and the sounds of the forest are but the ghosts of sounds
so smooth and beautiful people collect them for jewelry
4
Cormorants stretch their wings between periods of light
rain
estuary—river of tides
5
Here, at The Narrows
brackish water pushes into whirlpools
disorients perspective and fills in a continual lapping
over and over
These rocks not far from Chop point—the coming of six
rivers
Androscoggin, Cathance, Kennebec
river of cliff rock shelters, crooked river, still water
Eastern, Muddy, Abagadasset
what does it mean to be a river?
Inside the bay at Merrymeeting fields still waters leave
silt and mudflats
substrate that forms in the quiet current now critical
habitat for wading birds, Saltmarsh sparrows, mink
Striped bass spawning grounds
and calm mornings save for the distant screaming
of an eagle
where the water’s surface looks like glass—to hover in
an underwater ecotone
Kennebec indians left wild rice here in and around
Little Swan island
Champlain entered these waters in 1607
One of the tributaries is Maine’s only known location
for redfin pickerel
In the tidal flats a traveler can find waterwort, Three-
square bulrush, False pimpernel
6
It was 1955
Curious changes have been taking place
and we had record, she had record
with many animals invading this cold temperate zone
from the south
Mantis shrimp, Sea herring, Green crab
this new distribution related to the widespread change
of climate
7
Kennebec, Kennebis
the tribe named for the river, the river named for the bay
it emptied to—kinipek
Their warriors some say once numbered over a thousand
their story like the story of native Abenaki peoples—
driven from the river, into Canada
for the land was rich in fur and trees
As I follow the Kennebec north quaint towns like
settlements mark the river
used for over a hundred years by logging mills, textile
mills
the river once flooded with contaminants down
through Augusta
nearly forty miles from the sea
where the tidal surge still pressed upon the land
where the salmon would run, the sturgeon
Above the dam at Skowhegan, Anson, the dam at
Wyman lake
the river begins to look like rivers I have known
those that spring wild with trees from Appalachian bedrock
inside ridges rising
They are always en route to their own nothingness
Here, in the woods around Katahdin forests of ghost trees
come back to me
ghost forest
where every logging road looks like a place to camp
and the memory of huge evergreens lingers
The Kennebec
leaves Moosehead lake flowing southwest into falling
sunlight
with a kingfisher, a pair of diving ducks, rippling in
slight rapids as rivers do
—a voice
8
The river carries all of it
You could be the river, she says
whatever is in front of you
you could carry
9
I walk the wooded trail down to the estuary, a return
big trees loom—white pine, hemlock, Balsam fir
they will follow the descent of the land, where the tides
move
ebb and flow
the water’s pull upon rock, root
wind in the pines
wind in the pines
pine wind
pine song
10
Along the rocks
high tide crashes with thunderous force
echoes from below where mist rises and whips into
the wind
wave upon wave rolling in from a gray ocean, gray
sky
a dark line where horizon curves away from itself
and scoters, gulls, lolling up and down in the surf
There is a departure here—
Form is emptiness and emptiness is form
the tide will turn with little notice
the rocks will stay and the currents will move
and the trees will cling and hang their thick green heads
—an invocation
to the farthest reaches of the sea
Postscript. In New and Familiar Abenakis and English Dialogues, translated and published in 1884 by Chief Sozap Lolô, Abenakis (alias Jos. Laurent), he writes that the Kennebec river, in Abenakis, means "deep river." The research I had found previously pointed me to Kennebec, translated as, "still water." Technically, both get to the same sensibility or endpoint, though to me, this is a perfect example of what I might think of as indigenous wisdom: native peoples who know the land for thousands of years feel a true connection to it, and so, a kind of wisdom arises that is not simply what one sees on the surface but rather what is often difficult to see, or rather, is even unseen: the water of a river runs still because it is deep.
David Crews is a writer, editor, and wilderness advocate who currently resides in southern Vermont / ancestral lands of Mohican and Abenaki peoples. He cares for work that engages a reconnection to land and place, wilderness, preservation, nonviolence. He currently serves as managing editor for Wild Northeast.. Find David and more of his work at davidcrewspoetry.com
Kennebec Estuary Land Trust (kennebecestuary.org) is committed to conserving land and wildlife habitat of the Lower Kennebec and Sheepscot River estuaries. They are a community based membership organization serving the towns of Arrowsic, Bath, Bowdoinham, Dresden, West Bath, Georgetown, Richmond, Westport Island and Woolwich.
Other poems by contributing writer David Crews:
Four Poems for Northeast Wilderness Trust
”Liberation Farm” for Agrarian Trust + Somali Bantu Community Association