Sunday, February 18, 2024

Zither Lake at Lan Su Garden

lantern reflections

red shadows on green water

two orange carp kiss

 

 

Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside

Wednesday, February 07, 2024

On a Winding Road

Far, far out

on a winding road

comes a woman walking

with a heavy load

 

With a heavy heart

and a heavy tread

she walks the road

where it has led

 

She’s all alone

but she’s not afraid

she walks in sun

and rests in shade

 

The road breathes dust

and crawls through mud

underneath her feet

and through her blood

 

And you think she suffers

‘til she hits her stride

and then you see

that the road’s inside.


Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside

Saturday, January 27, 2024

Riverfront Park, Milwaukie

The air is so still. The river runs so fast

that friction heats the surface, shears off layers of mist

that float and billow in the windless air.

 

They may rise, drift, dissipate;

they may settle, coalesce, form a fogbank.

 

I stand with my heels on concrete, my toes on grass.

My stillness is in friction with passing time.

Johnson Creek’s outflow goes against the river’s current:

the zone where they meet is studded with whirlpools.

 

Nothing here tells me what direction to go,

nor how to reduce friction,

nor how to navigate turbulence—

just a song of small thunder from the Kellogg outfall

and river buoys ringing against the gathering dusk.

Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside

Sunday, January 07, 2024

Seen from the Air

I. September, 1982

 

Flying cross-country with United

I look out the window and learn so much.

 

I see the square fields of the Midwest

give way to the circles of the Great Plains,

 

see the violent upthrust of the Rockies

still roiling the air into in-flight turbulence.

 

I see the cloudless inter-mountain

painted every shade of late-summer dust.

 

The pilot’s bored, I guess. He entertains

himself and me with travelogue:

 

and on the right-hand side, folks, you can see

the mighty Columbia, Queen of the Western Rivers

 

if you look out now you can see Mt. St. Helens

with the flat top from the eruption

 

and here comes Mt. Hood on the left, we’ll be

making our final descent into Portland shortly

 

II. March, 2019

 

Since then I’ve learned new (old) names:
Ooligan, Wy’east, Lawetlat’la.

 

Shapes: the serpentine of riverbeds before

the trapping out of beavers, the dams and drainage.

 

Colors: subtle desert tones of sage, rabbitbrush,

mountain mahogany. Every shade of pink

 

that rhododendrons teach. I’ve learned

what cannot be seen from the air—

The feel of home.

 

 

Books Available
Dervish Lions
The Day of My First Driving Lesson
Country Well-Known as an Old Nightmare's Stable
High-Voltage Lines
Knocking from Inside