Time To Play The Bagpipes

Wet ghosts waving
cold water not warm enough
Then too warm then too cold.
How will it be in one hundred years
Now it is one hundred years
thought riding the tracks
see where they derailed watching
Train Wrecks Of Wasco County.

Summer Wind

What wind
at night
what noise
The train
instead.

Summer Rain

I was asked to write about it
Upset about the ride so far
What to do but keep going
The look the plain agitation
This unceasing travel maybe
Lucky enough we'll see above
The elevated language raining
Now on the sage nothing better

Region

In the early enough
Let's face it
Before you know it
Trouble ahead
Cypress

Dream of nothing
It doesn't hurt
Will go away
Someday this
Will all be
Grapes

Just remember
Lives spent
Impatient
Remembering
Wheat

We would die
Under the memory
Taking
Anything
And everything
Olives

Dreams So

Our dreams so small American
big under the magnifying

glass that is more than a little dusty
images appearing so large

Our fingers waiting for ourselves
action we took no looking back

faces memorizing lovely smiles disappearing
Where are the trash cans for the trash we are not

Their words will eat them some day
then they will know what we have been

leading me back to your face
fearless hearts faces naming

dreams counted on an inch
given another mile wide moon

Fall Run

The rest falling away
Old wall painted
Over with the fresh
And just knowing
About the layers
Making it seem solid
And thicker
Our lives:
Rain wind sun
The real river
There, underneath.

Dreams of Long Ago

Milk air
Close mountain
Baby snake
Lost
On the sidewalk
In back
Of Depot House
Too cold
To move.

Details West

Those were the details
Added in later
With a gunshot
A signature
With a rope
A silence
The handshake.

What matters
ospreys sitting

Smoke-filled
Fires everywhere

Up and down
The plateau

Its river fingers
Running cold
Over old lava beds.

Sleepless In Maupin

Nightmares, continuing on
into the next day

Featuring
Vice
my P.O.s





       (Vice Principals

Chasing me into the teacher's lounge
Their radios copying the principal, security

Scholastic magazine purchase order

Rejected

Three times)    For.).  Not.)     Meeting.)

The. )
Standards.


The answer is both
Both are correct
All of the above
miles of bubble sheets
brain' s lone silo
Now full now filling.

Let's Go Grand Island

He said he went to Florida with his wages
Rode the bus at 16 then went fishing
Looked around no that wasn't why
To the Sandhills for the farm job
Colorado dude ranch summer railroad yard, no it wasn't those but

Nebraska itself so huge so big a given going then returning.  Even though nothing changing in what he called Cold Oatmeal which made it disgusting sounding and not funny ha ha.

Melon Slice Moon

Laughing cow moon
My white jeans with writing all over
Letters saying wow and groovy
Stop war
Now

Melon slice moon
Smoked salmon bite
Owning all the power
Another word
Hanging

That's why I'm here finally dawning
Eugene hustle and bust like before
The long journeys full of thinking
And not much else supposedly
Things right where I left them

Downstream

Let out from the bottom of the dam
water is too cold
to smell the way up
the way back
this time of  year.  This is

what they say what they tell.

The problem is further downstream.
Larger, nearly impossible.

Beautiful town.  Stars
      turning    over
          in their graves.

Post Order

The smoke: poor vision   the strain: cloudy
overhead jam on I-5   wary    taking hours
in the canyon valley plateau   corridor    heat
remembering the volcano last year
hurricane a few days worth    taking months
later     to get over thought it    behind now

One Place Then Another

Monday of my life.
Cars rolling down Bakeoven Road.

Colder than the previous.
Sheep were the factor.

All that's in my head gets wasted.
Forgotten tea bag on the sink.

Speculating does not help.
What returns will longingly return.

Hanging there on the Warm Springs
Huge rippling white cloud.

At noon the siren just like in Nome.
The whistle just like in Schurz, Missoula, Reno, Roseburg, Sutherlin, Eugene.

Intermittent Animals

They live shadowy then full sun August
Under trees sage shadows in the morning
Afternoon too peppered with light flowers
Who can tell them apart who can judge.

The Smoothing

The town is a student of sage hills
The plateau, and its Middle Oregon tribes.

The falls are in the shadow of the old hotel
Now gone the orchard of bachelor apples
Now gone but the county is the size of pie.

The fish vibrant but what's in a name?
Steel metal all colors of breaking light
Cold underneath riding old lava beds
the memory of it waiting, watery.

Bluster

I asked if this wind could possibly
be from Shaniko
the answer was no

I asked if my life had meaning
if the grass all sleeping flat until fall
animals sitting in its stubble
along the corridor how did I get

Wrong gear up the hill from The Dalles
when I left them all standing around
their mouths tightly closed so this is what
it will be like on down the road so quick

Life over, the Rainbow Tavern painted pink
oh I get it now enjoying the view across

What thanks can I offer?  Sage seems like nothing
until you get really close and forget about breathing

Berry Humidity

The chip on his shoulder
buffalo variety
he said this life enough
to go through his many
disappointments.

Southern smoke
settling in
the Umpqua
soft edges
river glittering
smooth going.

Their roses
so thirsty the metal.

Wood chip heaven.
The brick building in town.
Thoughts sloppy, repeating.

Waiting For The New American Hot Club

Driven mad by pain
before the dew
evaporating
their steps are fast
schedules in hand
her stage name is Black Velvet
she goes by Crumbly or just
plain Kitten everybody knowing--
more kettle corn?  Some bottled
water?  A good place on the grass
just past the small tree hanging on
last time running back to fields

Leaving

She will see her sisters she's
waited her whole life this year
gone quick the day dreaming
always traveling to or away
from them counting their blessings
tough nuts fall from the oaks
along the scenic highway
onto basalt onto the surface
roll a little in the wind always
a surprise a joy seeing long ago.

Ospreys practice building their nests
along the corridor sometimes taking awhile
to get the hang of it starting out.

Glamping

I thought she was my mother
Even looking a little like my aunt
But they weren't she wasn't.

She takes her time, does not get
To the bottom of the map

her words are gardens with lots of paths
benches, pots, gazebos

Corners filled with light
Then cool mystery.  Leaving
meeting.  The depot.  Obsessed
With June.  Everything about her.

What could they find out

About nature, tenacity
retreating to the cafe
Holding up their hunger
To the incoming light.

Shaniko Revisited

Wool center of the world
Rattlesnakes right in town.

Miles away the river.
To measure

Look at the trail
Where it stops

Picks up again
Peaches, plums.

.

Eau Plateau

Where the only women who interested Lucien Manners, they told Arabella, were long-dead ones--like Cleopatra and Dido and Sappho--none of whom had anything in common with an empty-headed model girl, far too young for her age, whom Lucien described as as "street Arab."  Arabella had better just stop thinking

stranded in Greece with money,
Christine was grateful for the help
of Nicholas Martinos--
but it must stop at gratitude, she told herself firmly.

It was
inevitable that Nick would marry

Lovely Mariga,
Who had known him all his life.         But Christine
found Serena            was almost desperate
"lifelong security" to the successful
applicant.

It was a move that was to take her to far-off Chile, to a husband she had never met--and to what else?

To make matters worse,

Their host, the powerful and attractive Rory Stevens, had somehow acquired their uncle's property--and refused to say how.

What The

It never matters how many years
Grief sharpens up they don't return
But you return to them instead you
With your sunflowers  and funny hats
Hand around a stone so smooth.

The space too large even for the queen
of Rumania her dress its embroidery
silver wheat dripping stars golden
Blocks for sitting, leaning, sleeping
Above carved basalt woven tules
Beads everywhere pipes blankets.

Under Laminate

Sweet body fat from salt the signs
Talk about weaving and mashing
Drying and trading.

A big wheel
In the background.

Stand up in this wind
Mixing it all together--
Diamond memory
of sun basalt
Ghosts of
Constant
crashing sound.

Trees, Waterfall Stars

Big round around
please paint me here
use dark moss and ponderosa
find the other shade
one close to
waterfall stars.

This punctuation lasts and lasts and last
see what happens attention lingering.

Entirely

Blazing heat cruel sage nubby
basaltic hardscrabble sage velvet

Together

They need the train to roll.  The stock
Is a powerful horse.
Wanting to run and then
Getting to.  That is freedom.

They do stop to eat
On their way to Bend
I just put two and two.

Lore

between the icy water
and the air set to bake
at a million degrees

Feel it
the only place it exists

A parallel corridor
Thickness
Just a few feet

This subtraction
what we came for
Dear grain elevator
Dear drug