These are the waters in Maryland that I have seen with my own eyes

The Anacostia (Algonquian: "stream, current"); Antietam (Algonquian: it is thought to mean "swift water") Creek; the Blackwater; Budds Creek. Cabin John Creek -- Hammill Kenny in Place Names of Maryland: Their Origin and Meaning speculates that "'Cabin' in Cabin John is evidently a folk corruption of "Captain"). Catoctin ("speckled mountain") Creek; the Chesapeake ("great shell-fish bay") Bay; the Chester, which first appears in the written record in 1667. The Choptank, where my late father in law watched his own father, a waterman, die while out fishing. My father in law brought the boat back to shore alone, his father's body scant inches away, and how long must that journey home have been? The name Choptank, incidentally, is Algonquian for "it flows back strongly."


Deer Creek; Gunpowder Falls; Gwynns Falls; Herring Run; Indian Creek; Jones Falls, which I drive over at least twice every weekday. Licking Creek; Limekiln Branch; Little Falls Branch; the Magothy, where Kim learned to sail. The Nanticoke ("people of the tidewater"). The Patapsco ("point of rocks"), where kami dwell in the rapids and eddies. The Patuxent ("at the falls or rapids"); the Pocomoke ("pierced or broken ground"), where I learned to kayak. The Potomac ("where one comes in"), where I went water-skiing one weekend with a friend's boyfriend and his friend, whose names I can't remember now. One morning I took Anne-Marie to Georgetown Harbor and we ate brunch on the banks of the Potomac and watched the Georgetown University crew team scull past. I arranged all this in an attempt to impress her, but in the end it turned out I was trying too hard.


Rock Creek; the Severn, which used to be known as the Anne Arundell River; Sideling Hill Creek, hard by that striated scar on the face of Washington County; Sligo Creek, halfway around the world from its namesake in Connaught. The Susquehanna ("smooth-flowing stream"), dammed at Conowingo in northeastern Maryland; you pass it on the road to the bimonthly Brandywine Valley Sacred Harp singing, just south of West Chester, Pennsylvania. Many of Kim's Pennsylvania relatives - solid, decent Methodists and Mennonites of English and Pennsylvania Dutch stock - still live along the river, as they have for the past two centuries. Tom's Creek; the Wicomico ("pleasant dwelling"); the Wye; the Youghiogheny, which could mean either "four lands" or "dirty stream," and in any case is difficult to pronounce.


Under various names, I have praised only you, rivers!
You are milk and honey and love and death and dance.
From a spring in hidden grottoes, seeping from mossy rocks,
Where a goddess pours live water from a pitcher,
At clear streams in the meadow, where rills murmur underground,
Your race and my race begin, and amazement, and quick passage.

- Czeslaw Milosz