River Songs by Andrea Jenkins

River Songs: The Wonderment of This Tributary was commissioned by the Mississippi Watershed Management Organization (MWMO) as part of its Creative Watershed initiative, which integrates artistic expression into the organization’s work to inspire new ways of connecting with the Mississippi River. Alongside science, engineering, and restoration, MWMO believes creativity plays an important role in deepening community connections and fostering collective stewardship of our shared waters.

Commissioned during the Sacred Water, Shared Future initiative, River Songs reflects on the stretch of the Mississippi River that defines the MWMO watershed. Inspired by one of Andrea Jenkins’ earlier poems, the work explores the relationship between people, place, and the built environment, inviting us to consider how we shape the river, how the river shapes us, and our shared responsibility to sustain it for generations to come.

River Songs: The Wonderment of This Tributary

“Be The Water”
Bruce Lee

In the land of sky blue waters
There’s a muddy/murky/river
A black river/ol’man river
A mighty river
Mizi-Ziibi/the Great River/the Anishinabe called it
There’s a song that the river sings/
It calls us home/
Eagles and Egrets live here/the fishing is good

144 Bridges span this shipping highway/
Some connects communities/
Some separate them/
Lake Itasca
Bemidji
Minneapolis/Saint Paul
Lacrosse
Saint Louis
Memphis
New Orleans
Baton Rogue
Biloxi
But like Isiah from the Bible we must be repairers of the bridge

100 years ago/this river called/the Father of Waters/
Was pronounced dead/like Confederate General Stonewall Jackson/
Unalived by “friendly fire”

The river that brought the world Gold Medal Flour/Budweiser/
The King of Beers/The Memphis Blues/Riverboat Queens/
Dreaming bigger dreams/the world shifted when these brands shook the stage/
With great progress comes great harms

This river holds dark secrets/unspeakable tales of benign neglect/and intentional horror
As fate would intervene/an artistically designed sculpture called Fonz Americanus or Daughter of the Waters/lives in our imaginations/remembering/water/
Holds all the power/
Water sustains life/
Spills over its banks/and takes life away

“Wade in the water/Wade in the water chil’ren/Wade in the water/
God’s gonna trouble these waters”/
Langston Hughes/wrote/
“I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe went down to New Orleans/
And I’ve seen it’s muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset”/

New Orleans/French Quarters/that were also slave trading markets/
Where Black mamas/holding white babies/were forced to wear head wraps/
To distinguish them from the white women/the one drop rule/was a real thing/
Oh you don’t know about the one drop doctrine/it says that if you have one drop of Black blood/you are Black/
There are voices buried in the Mississippi River bottom/ancestors and future chil’ren
Alike/singing river songs of redemption/
Choctaw/Seminole/Black Cherokee in the Deep South/
Way up north near Bdote’ where body and spirit converge/stands Fort Snelling/

There Dakota/Lakota/Ojibwe bodies rise when the barges churn the river’s bottom/

There is much pain coursing through these dark waters
Slavery
Genocide
Industrialization
Capitalism
Colonialism

And yet this mighty River that divides this 250 year old nation from east to west
Still shines
“Oh Black water, keep on rollin’, Mississippi moon won’t you keep on shining on me”