Don't Swim in the Seine

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: RIVER SERIES

Swimming in the Seine

 

There are many things that you can do

Like singing in the rain

Like driving down a lonely road

Or strolling down a country lane

You can take a trip to Iceland

You can spend some time in Spain

You can say or do a million things

And do them once again

But you can’t swim in the Seine

 

For the river is a toxic stew

It would surely make you ill

You might survive the poisoning

If you take a magic pill

You might do it if you dared

But the wiser will refrain

There’s a world of awe in Paris

It’s a place where one has been

But don’t swim in the Seine

 

You can walk down Champs Elysees

You can visit Musee d’Orsay

Bow down before the Arc de Triomphe

Pay your respect to Notre Dame

You cannot miss la Tour Eiffel

Nor the grace of Pere Lachaise

The Louvre is filled with wonders

You can share them with a friend

But you can’t swim in the Seine

 

The Rhine (River Series)

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: RIVER SERIES

The Rhine (River Series)

 

Among the most glorious rivers of Europe

The Rhine courses through six nations

From its birth in the Netherlands

It traces borders dividing Switzerland and

Lichtenstein, between Austria and Germany

It defines much of the French-German border

The magnificent Rhine graces the grand cities of

Cologne, Duesseldorf, Rotterdam and Strasbourg

Combined with the Danube it fed and fueled

The Holy Roman Empire

To know the Rhine is to know much of the

History of Europe

A history of triumph, conquest and tragedy

For civilization follows the path of the great rivers

Wars are drawn to their boundaries

Fates are determined by their bounty

The Rhine is the glory of Europe

And yet may mark its decline

Mississippi Sprawl

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: RIVER SERIES

Mississippi Sprawl (River Series)

 

They tried to tame the mighty river

To curb its mighty sprawl

But levees break and crumble

And mighty dams will fall

The mighty Mississippi is

The greatest of them all

 

The age of epic tragedy

Comes knocking at the door

Fire rain and thunder

A chain of monster storms

Too late to turn the tide

We watch the planet warm

We listen to her call

The mighty Mississippi is

The greatest of them all

 

The latest floods upon us

The Mississippi sprawl

We scramble to take cover

To make the flooding stall

But levees break and crumble

And mighty dams will fall

The mighty Mississippi is

The greatest of them all

 

The River Liffey

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR:  RIVER SERIES

The River Liffey

 

The River Liffey gives life to Dublin

Where Mister Joyce once plied his wares

Where all the men are strong and brave

Where the women are more than fair

 

It rises from the nearby mountains

Tracing the lowlands of Kildare

It cuts straight through the heart of Dublin

Bringing all it has to bear

 

It empties in the Irish Sea

Where the land and sea collide

Where the sailors rough and tumble

Take the ocean as their bride

 

Without the River Liffey

The town of Dublin would not be

And all the treasured Irish poets

Would be without their poetry

 

Mississippi Vanishing (River Series)

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: RIVERS SERIES

Mississippi Vanishing (River Series)

 

The great river of a mighty continent

The pounding heartbeat of America

Runs dry before our very eyes

Mississippi vanishing

 

Did we know it would happen like this?

Did we know it would happen so fast?

She was once the mother of rivers

So powerful strong and vast

 

Will we mourn her when she leaves us?

Will it tear our hearts apart?

It was here that Clemens flourished

The Mississippi blessed his start

 

The great river is now dying

Like the land it fuels and feeds

The warming of a planet

Neglect of its vital needs

 

The Danube

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: RIVER SERIES

 

The Danube (River Series)

 

The Danube runs from eastern Germany

Through Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia

Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova and Ukraine

There it empties into the Black Sea

Where it has watched human history

From the front row balcony

 

It has seen the wars that humans fight

It has seen the stone, bronze and iron ages

It has traced the rise and fall of the Roman empire

The mongrels and the Ottomans

Atilla the Hun and Alexander the Great

It has watched the crusades of Christians

And the conquests of the moors

 

The grand Danube river suffered through

The age of industry as massive pollution

Filled its waters with chemical waste

 

The Danube is running low now

As Europe’s five-hundred-year drought

Wipes away the river’s vibrant flow

Exposing relics of the second world war

Altering flood plains and threatening crops

Protestors in Bucharest plead for revise

As water supplies are rationed

Hydroelectric power is reduced

And river transport is compromised

 

Those who have depended on the Danube

For hundreds and thousands of years

Are reaching the desperate hours

We cannot go on pretending

Nothing has changed when

Everything has changed

 

The river Danube is running low

Before long it may run dry

Unless we take drastic action now

 

Po Runs Dry

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: RIVER SERIES

Po Runs Dry

 

The waters that feed an ancient land

That fuel the farms and vineyards

From lush valleys to rolling hills

From heavenly gardens to fields of plenty

The river that has carved its way

Through granite mountains and forests

That has given a people life

In all its splendor

 

The River Po is running dry

And we know why

We all know why

 

Millennia of running waters

Millennia of winding through the earth

Millennia of streams and tributaries

Feeding a land of thirst

 

The River Po is running dry

And we know why

We all know why

 

How long before the whole of Italy

The land that gave us Dante

The land that nourished a great religion

A land rich in wine and fine cuisine

A land of superb architecture

A land of philosophy and culture

Alas becomes a barren wasteland

 

The River Po is running dry

And we know why

We all know why

 

The Rio Grande (River Series)

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: LIFE SONGS (RIVER SERIES)

 

Rio Grande (River Series)

 

The river that divides north and south

El Norte y el Sur

A river that divides one nation from another

Dos lenguajes y culturas

A river that gives life

And takes life away

 

Songs sung and stories told

Midnight crossing under dim moonlight

Coyotes bent on betrayal

Money lost

Families broken

Children swept away

Mothers weeping

People abandoned like stray cattle

In the barren Arizona desert

 

If the Rio Grande could tell its story

Its waters would swell with tears

Its current run with the sweat of labor

Its banks stained with blood

 

The river gives and the river takes

Cross at your own peril

Cross if you must

Cross if you will

But beware: the river kills

 

The River Po

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: RIVER SERIES

The River Po

 

Running from the Alps to the Adriatic Sea

A wide and mighty river

The longest in Italy

 

It feeds the wealth of Turin and lovely Milan

Where da Vinci designed channels

Where poets devised songs

 

It concludes its run near Venice

Where it is populated by eels

Such a very strange phenomenon

To provide Italian meals

 

The great river nearly dried up

Twice in twenty years

That it will happen once again

Fuels our global warming fears

 

The river that turns purple

Like the wines that we hold dear

May one day not too distant

Simply fold and disappear

 

The Ganges (River Series)

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: RIVER SERIES

The Ganges

 

The Ganges is a sacred river

To millions of Hindu followers

The embodiment of a goddess

They bathe in its sacred waters

 

They bury their dead in the Ganges

They dispose their sewage and waste

After centuries of endless pollution

The Ganges is a hopeless case

 

It was meant to purify humans

So the Hindu legends tell

But humans poisoned the Ganges

Turning heaven into earthly hell

 

Let us pray it is not too late

To turn the Ganges around

To cleanse the sacred waters

And reclaim a hallowed ground

 

The Congo (River Series)

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: RIVER SERIES

 

The Congo

 

You can hear the drums of the Congo

As if they were moving near

Charging western imagination

Filling our hearts with fear

 

Tarzan was lost in the jungle

That was fed by the Congo River

Where animals were wild and fierce

Making civilized people shiver

 

Alas the Congo was mostly myth

Invented by western writers

Reality is far more subtle

Than strange uncivilized fighters

 

The Congo feeds an abundant life

Its wildness is its glory

Without it so much life would cease

To shorten the planet’s story

 

The Nile (River Series)

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: RIVER SERIES

The Nile

 

The longest river on the planet

It shaped the lives of ancient Egypt

Gave birth to modern agriculture

Challenged our sense of entitlement

 

Cleopatra floated her royal barge

Down the waters of the River Nile

Mark Anthony and Julius Caesar

Made history for Shakespeare’s file

 

The granddaddy of African rivers

It feeds eleven modern nations

From Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean

It enabled an advanced civilization

 

Oh how we revere the River Nile

For its storied and mythical past

The river runs with an eternal force

Forever and always will it last

 

The Yangtze (River Series)

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: RIVER SERIES

The Yangtze  

 

The longest river in Asia

Among the longest on the planet earth

As the birthplace of their civilization

The Chinese value its worth

 

The Yangtze gives and the Yangtze takes

Its yellow waters are a blessing

It is known for frequent flooding

Yet the people have learned its lessons

 

Some call it the river of sorrow

For it has claimed a great many lives

Yet the people give their humble thanks

For with the river all wildlife thrives

 

The Amazon (River Series)

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: RIVER SERIES

 

The Amazon

 

The river that feeds a continent

That nourishes a vast rain forest

That mystifies the curious

And terrifies the adventurous

Holds secrets we have hardly glimpsed

Medicines to cure diseases

Formulae to life abundant

Lifeforms that defy all knowledge

Tribes that perfect new ways of life

 

The Amazon has stirred imagination

For as long as humans have been

It dares us to explore its mysteries

Defies us to make it home

 

Without the Amazon to cleanse the air

Our world would long have ceased

We thank the Amazon for its mercy

And promise to live in peace

 

The Mississippi

 RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: RIVER SERIES

The Mississippi

 

Old Sam Clemens steered his riverboat

Down the muddy waters of the Mississippi

Spinning yarns of childhood dreams

Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn

 

The Missouri and the Mississippi

Split the north American continent

Lifeline along the continental divide

Heartbeat of a vast great nation

 

Those who have traced the great river

From her northern most birth

To her womb in New Orleans

Know the grandness of her waters

Her majesty and vulnerability

 

Men have tried to steer her course

With tragic and empty results

We have built towns in her path

And watched them mowed down

The mighty river will not be told

She is stronger than we are bold

 

We must learn what the riverboats know

Let the river flow where it flows

 

The Rhine (River Series)

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: RIVER SERIES

 

The Rhine

 

The river that gives life to Berlin

The beating heart of the German nation

River of castles and fortifications

Where the Romans claimed their empire

 

The Rhine has grown angry and proud

Determined to have its revenge

The only way it knows how

It rises to claim the land beneath homes

Beneath buildings bridges and towns

The people are at her mercy

They run for cover

They plead for help

They pray for survival

 

When the river is angry

The people listen

There will be no comfort

It will not be fine

Til they make their peace

With the River Rhine