Two Little Rivers

By Laura Pochintesta

Name the great rivers of the world

You know, the ones you learned

In school – how to spell them,

Where on earth they are,

The direction in which they flow,

Their basin, their source - in fact

All the terms you memorized for the geography quiz

Remember the Nile, the Amazon,

The Tigris and Euphrates, the

M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i

Most of us grew up never having seen

Most of them, just memorizing

Their lengths, their significance as

Feeders of fertile soil on which great

Civilizations were planted.

But, no one ever talks about the

Two little rivers

Where my ancestors are from

Their names do not ring a bell on any test

They are so far from grand they sometimes

Dry up all together in the heat of midsummer

When pebbles and rocks pockmark the course

Where their waters will flow again come fall.

From these

Two little rivers

Came hundreds, maybe thousands, of people

Some of whom ended up on ships carrying them

Across oceans bound for greater rivers

Far from the people born in the hills and valleys

Formed and fed by those

Two little rivers

Whose names will be forgotten by those who don’t learn

To sing the songs and tell the stories that speak of them

Two little rivers

Whose currents will pulse in the veins of their descendants

Flowing, surging like lifeblood, emptying themselves

Into a future sea

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Laura Pochintesta is a writer in Connecticut. She enjoys writing poetry and fiction that examine relationships in a historical context, often with a focus on familial bonds, faith, migration and home. Her work has appeared in literary journals. Her chapbook She: A Small Book of Poems is available on Amazon.