OYO, The Beautiful River is environmental literature, a book-length sequence of lyric narratives written from a journey down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Cairo, Illinois, in a fifteen-foot rowing dory. It explores the vulnerability of identity and relationships within this oftentimes polluted and quickly changing place we call home, our nation, this world. A theme of reciprocity develops between self and river, between the human and the elemental, and honors the First Nations with a belief that justice and compassion are the appropriate and inevitable outcomes to the respect we give to the Earth.