Delmarva Review: Harriet’s Song by David Salner

Author’s Note: “As I drive through the Delaware wetlands, I think of Harriet Tubman and how her song can still be heard.”

Harriet’s Song
—Delaware

Can you feel the pull of it,
the moon’s force in your veins, the tides
that once ran through these fields of corn,
tassel fibers floating, silky and brown?

Drained long ago, this land was swamps and wetlands,
with catkin grass extending to the ocean, when mud
was everywhere, when towering sweetgum
provided shade for runaways to hide in.

Let us go back and hide with them, for we are bound
to those bound people—into a past that flows through
and flows around us. Let us go back—and listen,
come nightfall, for Harriet’s song . . .

♦

David Salner’s first novel, A Place to Hide, is being published this year. His most recent poetry collection is The Stillness of Certain Valleys (Broadstone Books, 2019). He worked all over the U.S. as an iron ore miner, steelworker, machinist, bus driver, garment laborer, teacher, and librarian. His stories and poems have appeared in many journals including Threepenny Review, Delmarva Review, Ploughshares, Beloit Poetry Journal. Website: www.DSalner.wix.com/salner

Delmarva Review publishes the best of new poetry and prose selected from thousands of submissions annually. As an independent nonprofit, the literary journal receives partial financial support from a Talbot County Arts Council grant with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Readers can purchase print and digital copies from Amazon.com and other major online booksellers, and from regional specialty bookstores. Writers are welcome to submit their best work, until March 31, to be considered for the 14th edition. See the website: www.DelmarvaReview.org.