Pete And Henry

Henry Hudson went to Harvard but he had a calling for the sea,
He dropped out, dreaming, this Columbus wannabee,
Of the riches that awaited, cause he knew he'd succeed.
Now what Henry was feeling was the power of greed.
In sixteen oh something, before we were a nation
He helped clear the way to Dutch exploitation,
To English colonization, to western domination.
He was looking for the Northeast Passage when he set sail,
But right off the coast he noticed whale after whale.
He sailed up this river (whose water you could drink),
Whose shores were abundant with ermine and mink.
He took piles of pelts of beavers and weasels;
The Mohawks got steel blades and small pox and measles.
He must have smiled at the sweet deal he made;
For some trinkets and knives with really good blades
He jumpstarted European whaling and the fur trade.
If you include Verrazano, and every "Indian Giver",
He was maybe the hundred thousandth person to see that river.
But, great plunder brings great renown -
They put his name on a bay, a parkway, a town,
And they put his name on that river, pristine,
Teeming with fish, unpolluted and clean.
That moment, when those waters first caught Henry's eyes,
the seed was sown for the river's demise.
From beaver carcasses to industrial sleaze,
To nuclear leaks and PCBs.
On his very last search for that passage East
The crew wanted to head home; they were pissed to say the least.
They were in this big bay with no way to the Pacific,
And food was running out, and the cold was horrific!
A mutiny erupted and some of his men
Set him adrift. He was never seen again.

Pete Seeger too went to Harvard as a kid
Three and half centuries after Henry did.
Pete too had a calling. And it was strong.
What Pete was feeling was the power of song.
He sang with migrants and miners, learned about their lives.
Sang with Cisco Huston, Johnny Cash and Burl Ives,
Sang Good Night Irene with Brownie McGee
And Sonny Terry. Sang with Buffy Sainte Marie,
The Stanly Brothers, The Clancy Brothers, even
The Smothers Brothers,
Lead Belly, Jelly Roll, and many many others,
(Elizabeth Cotton, Doc Watson, Odetta, Josh White…)
Sang at summer camps and schools to the children's great delight,
In concert Halls and Union Halls, or round a fire at night,
With Martin Luthor King singing We Shall Overcome
with half a million people at the March on Washington,
And on the march from Selma to Montgomery.
And that's just a synopsis, a brief summary.
Obama once called him America's Tuning Fork.
From California to the Isle of New York,
He brought hope and joy. He was a world mender.
On his banjo: "This Machine Surrounds Hate
and Forces it to Surrender"
His songs were simple, but they caught the essence.
Pete gave the whole world 5 string banjo lessons.
And when McCarthyism came around,
He never named names. And like the Union Maid,
He always stood his ground.
He never pleaded the fifth – he felt the first was enough.
He got blacklisted, lost his paying gigs. It got really tough,
But he kept singing. Built his own log cabin,
Didn't smoke or drink, there was never any crotch grabbin'.
He and Toshi got the Clearwater sailing and like a dream,
The river went from a sewer to a healthy stream.
What he did was impossible, or so it seemed.
Working with the people, without lobbyists or courts of law,
He got the river flowing back towards what Hudson first saw.
And if we're going to claim that this land is just,
The river doesn't belong to fur trappers or Entergy,
The river doesn't belong to the EPA or GE.
It belongs to us.

So let's cherish it. Pete Seeger's River.
You know that sounds pretty neat.
Pete Seeger's River. The Pete Seeger River.
We should name the river after Pete.

Pete And Henry

New Poems

From By Heart

Some Earlier Poems

Audio Recordings