Will Hornyak: Ode to Lady Topofilia, An Oregon Love Poem

I wept when I first heard our friend Will's poem read to us by his lovely wife and my dear friend, Concetta. So many of the places spoken to here are places of my heart and the heart of our family. We traveled to these Wild Places throughout our children's growing up years. These were among our places of deep connection with beauty and wildness and our Earth Mother. This Oregon love poem provides glimpses into what was our family's holy Cathedral. And Will could not have brought Her to Life more masterfully or with greater love. Deep, deep gratitude to Will for his poem and for the treasure we know as home, our wondrous Earth and all that she gifts us with here in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. Blessed be. — Molly

Crooked River winding through Smith Rock State Park, Central Oregon. Photo by Molly

 Ode to Lady Topofilia, An Oregon Love Poem

By Will Hornyak

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love your hot rugged rocky curvaceous

Crooked River Canyon country

I swoon at the scent of your

high desert Owyhee sagebrush perfume

your John Day River country juniper

pungent summer Ochoco Mountain pine sap

but there is nothing more intoxicating than the scent

Ode to Lady Topofilia, An Oregon Love Poem

of your springtime Willamette Valley lilac

planted deep in dark silty alluvial soils.

Oh but Lady Topofilia I love as well

the odiferous aromas you wear at low tide

beneath dark Columbia River wharves at Astoria

where mammoth sea lions sprawl over themselves

like drunken sailors on slimy kelp-strewn

barnacled blocks of rip-rap barking howling

singing off-key as black storm clouds

wind-whipped winter rains deadly ocean swells

keep fisherman and sailors anchored safely

in Warrenton barrooms shooting pool swapping lies

over shots and beers.

Lady Topofilia when I roam far from my Milwaukie home

birthplace of the Bing Cherry

where Kellog and Johnson Creeks

meet the mighty Willamette

I am not truly home until I have made my pilgrimage

to your shore breathed in again your heady brew

of rotten Cottonwood leaf mulch goose poop mud

silt-laden Willamette waters

not until the Great Blue heron

has scolded me rrraakk rrraakk rrrakk

as I intrude once again upon its solitude

and send it winging ponderously upriver

towards Willamette Falls where monstrous sturgeon

still swim in those waters where Clackamas villagers

fished grew plump on eel steelhead and salmon

for four thousand years.

But Lady Topofilia who can forget the nights?

Oh the nights!

When silver moonlight gleamed

upon your buxom black columnar basalt outcroppings

and far below your Deschutes river waters whispered to me

murmured lapped then thundered ecstatic

through Whitehorse Buckskin Mary Wapinitia rapids

surging through rolling Moro and Sherman County hills

cloaked in your gown of winter wheat.

Lady Topofilia I admire how generously easily

your Columbia River hefts conveys

tug boats massive wheat-and-potato-laden barges

fishing boats sailboats sailboards on bright waters above

and how below your dark currents still remember

trace caress that vast maze

of volcanic basalt river channels and chutes

mother lode of Chinook and Coho runs

Celilo Falls

Buried beneath still waters

where your voice sang for millenia in a hundred choirs

of free flowing cataracts and waterfalls

and joined with songs of

Cayuse Chinook Nez Perce Tenino Umatilla Yakima

And more and more and more for millennia.

Lady Topofilia

You are ancient storied and ever new

From your fertile womb of Tillamook tidelands

To sunburnt Steens lush Blue Mountains Alvord Desert

sands

Remote Imnaha Basque Rome

To South Wind at Port Orford

Pastoral Sweet Home

You are the Dew lipped Spring maiden ripe Summer fruit

Wise Autumn crone wild screeching Winter hag.

I am your love slave gigolo

most ardent admirer

Queen of My Heart Goddess Muse of my soul

For you my love never ever tires.

@Will Hornyak

Sheep Rock, John Day Fossil Beds, Eastern Oregon. Photo by Molly

Fort Rock, where 9,000 year old sandals have been found, Eastern Oregon. Photo by Molly