May 29th, Port
Royal Park
Flooded Red River running fast;
water’s gone down nine, maybe ten feet.
I can see on the other shore
grasses water-combed over pointing downstream,
mud bank caved in,
flotsam running by.
I’ve known this river
most my life and though it flows
minute to minute through the same rust-red mud
it ain’t never minute to minute been the same. 
Port Royal, Tennessee, was founded in 1797, after having been a longhunter camp as early as 1771, and rose to great prominence in the early part of the 19th century because of its strategic location at the head of navigation on the Red River and as the only stop on the "Great Western Road" stagecoach line between Nashville, Tennessee, and Hopkinsville, Kentucky.
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