Such a beautiful gift from our friend Will.
Deepest bow. 🙏 Molly
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| The Crooked River at Smith Rock State Park, Photo by Molly |
My Topofilia
(Love of Place)
Ode to the Goddess “Oregon”
I love your hot, rugged, curvaceous
Swoon at the scent of your
Owyhee sagebrush perfume
John Day River junipers
And springtime Willamette Valley lilac
Planted in dark, alluvial soils.
I love the odiferous aromas you wear as well
Beneath dark Columbia River wharves at Astoria
Where mammoth sea lions sprawl over themselves
Like drunken sailors on kelp-strewn
Barnacled blocks of rip-rap
Barking, howling, singing off-key
While far off shore wind-whipped winter rains
And deadly ocean swells
Keep fisherman and sailors anchored safely
In barrooms from Astoria to Brookings
Shooting pool and swapping lies
Over shots and beers.
When I roam far from my Milwaukie home
(Birthplace of the Bing Cherry)
I am not truly home until I walk the riverbank
Breathe in that heady concoction of rotten
Cottonwood leaf mulch, goose poop, muck and mud
Intrude on the solitude of a Great Blue heron
And send it winging rraack, rraack, rrakk
Slowly, ponderously upriver
Towards Willamette Falls where monstrous sturgeon
Still swim where Clackamas Chinook villagers
Fished, hunted, told stories, made love
For four thousand years.
I remember the nights
When silver moonlight gleamed upon
Your towering basalt cliffs
And far below your Deschutes River waters
Whispered, murmured, lapped
Then thundered, wild and ecstatic
Through Whitehorse, Buckskin Mary and Wapinitia rapids
Then undulated through rolling
Moro and Sherman County hills
Cloaked in your gown of white winter wheat.
I admire how generously, easily
Your Columbia River waters heft, convey
Massive wheat and potato laden barges
Tugboats, fishing boats, sailboats, sailboards
On bright waters above
While below your deep currents still
Trace, caress and remember
Celilo Falls
That motherlode of salmon runs
Tribal gathering ground
Silent now beneath dammed waters
Where your voice once sang out in a hundred choirs
Of cataracts and waterfalls
And joined with the songs of
Cayuse, Chinook, Nez Perce, Tenino, Umatilla, Wishram, Wasco, Shoshone, Yakima and more
For ten thousand years.
You are ancient and ever new
From fecund Tillamook Bay tidelands
To sunburned Steens Mountain and Alvord Desert sands
From remote Imnaha, Basque and Rome
To South Wind of Port Orford
And pastoral Sweet Home
You are the dew-lipped spring maiden
The ripe summer fruit, wise autumn crone
Wild, screeching winter hag.
And I am your love slave, your gigolo
Your most ardent admirer
Muse of my soul
My love for you never tires.
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