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About The North Coast times-eagle. (Wheeler, Oregon) 1971-2007 | View Entire Issue (March 1, 2005)
PAGE 6 POETRY WHAT WE ARE LEFT WITH (for Paul, Fenton, Grandpa & Grandma P, and especially Vlkl) SEASONED TO RESIST There’s a man who comes into the tavern shaggy hair and sideburns the same striped shirt everyday. Forget manners, trivia, front page news. In love, he doesn’t realize the bartender gets paid to smile. We are written on the walls in fate’s faded print. I saw it. It said you and me, in dancing jester letters, vintage lithographs in reddish gold, glinty tones. Outside, high on a wire above the river a pessimistic crow sits every day at four o’clock. He watches the cook, waitress and dishwasher chain smoking wearing the same old white shirts just like always. We beat around a shared drum, circling, like shy eagles stalking a divine and universal chord, irresistibly drawn, seasoned to resist. Downtown, a lawyer logs fifteen hour days swigging tumblers of whiskey, complaining how political the world is becoming as he tries to keep politicians out of jail. His secretary sits playing solitaire promiscuously handing out privileged information. -THEDA SPRACKLIN Further up the hill, an old lady no one ever forgets sits alone in a room of her choosing with a calendar. It is a scorecard marking points of who comes to pay attention. Nothing’s really wrong here and she’s had all the rings, teacups, silvery teaspoons she ever wanted. Just spoiled, she never learned to eat alone. The town continues to spin which is fine. It wants new houses to be built where the plywood mill used to be. The cruise ships coming into port add more scenery for the lawyer, the secretary and the old lady than they take away. Everything is the same for the man and the bartender at the tavern. Even his striped shirt and her thin smile though the crow notices the dishwasher and the cook wear nice, familiar second hand coats to smoke because it’s getting colder outside. DONALD OSBORNE HELLO M O O N Hello Moon. Hello. Hello. Welcome to this world Welcome to a world where animals and humans roam the earth. Welcome to a world of many different colors. Welcome to a world of many different cultures and religions. Welcome to this world Moon. - L IL Y D E U F E L THE MARRIAGE OF BOREDOM & FEAR How we obsess on the news, the two of us as if after a long day to prove we’re still here, perched on the frame of the big picture, more sparrow than hawk or crow, outside for now in our bubble the wars cancer starvation just waiting — old enough to want nothing more than the routine of a roof and inside a hand to hold across some small hope we can’t name, It’s out in the country where you notice most what we are left with. Not in the rural routes that now have names or corn and pancake feeds becoming tourist attractions. That’s actually a bit romantic, not at all hard to live with. No. It is most noticeable in standing next to the old men on the bridge above Big Creek. It is in watching the salmon jumping upstream above the churning waters. It is noticing those collecting in the deeper, stiller waters along the edges to rest. It is that we aren’t left with any words to tell them so we talk about fishing. -DEBBIE BARENDSE REED VINE MAPLE ASH LIGHT Driving out of the city into the ash light of rain. Metronome wipers. Swaying blurs of green. Bach wringing the anguish of beauty through cello fugues. Yellow line curling and curling. Sun showers on rain showers. Mind unwinding. Arriving with the tide. For the last bird of evening. -EARLENE LEIF ‘I think I ’d rather have stories to tell than a bank account. ’ Green beneath green, all spring and summer they hide in the understory, then early in fall each leaf begins to burn: yellow, orange, red. After the alder and big leaf maples are stripped by wind and rain, they come to light, glowing among the rain-black trunks, holding their leaves a day, a week, or two longer. But even they will be bared to their skeletal selves before the darkest day drains quickly into the longest night. Now the sun-sweetened sap has sunk into the soil-bound roots, buds are clenched tight, gripping their dream of dappled light when each new leaf will open its palm to greet the returning sun. -G ENO LEECH UPON FINDING A DEAD CAT ON THE SIDEWALK I have a slight hangover so the edges of things are very sharp and bright. The dog is still pulling at the leash even after that large shaggy has quit barking at us and then I see that black cat sleeping across the street. I can read my dog in the tension in the rope but cats don’t sleep on sidewalks and why is he on that cardboard? I pause for one full minute wanting to turn around but afraid and finally tell myself This is Life, the birth and death of things and his whole body is black, even the eyes black with no shine till they’re almost gone. The fur is wet and I wouldn’t say he looks peaceful considering that bright red all limits accepted and blown apart with one spin of the wheel, desire Green beneath green. -JIM DOTT the spectre of some child alone on his knees in front of a screen flickering bluewhite in an empty house cars, tits, easy money filling his face that might one day flash into our lives and make news of us. -D O U G M A R X ZERO PEOPLE stagger lurch and try fall on bloody knees and cry roll over on the river bank and die don’t you know the stock market is up was it the hand of fate or hate the hand of greed and indifference to need or were all hands just too busy at the helm were you just born invisible and loneliness killed you should you be ashamed for leaving your dead body there and if a fatted tongue said disgraceful would your spirit laugh and echo in the void ashamed of dying so selfishly in the material face of contempt -LYNN SMITH UNTITLED 1G You know the feeling At the back of your neck And the way it settles there After crawling insidiously Up your back Making your hair stand on end Making your eyes pop out Making your hands clench into fists And your nails dig half moons Into the flesh of your palms As you picture With intense satisfaction The kind of explosions That only happen in movies starring Bruce Willis, But you don’t want to save the world Because the hero of this story Wants to burn, beat, and break things Wants the walls to fucking crumble Wants to take these hands and place them Around your throat Until you shut up shut up shut up And stop stressing me out! dribble but he is most certainly dead. Walking home I look up and there are three different shades of blue all in that one spot and there goes my soul leaping out of my chest till I have to put my hand there to stop it. The world is too big and beautiful to hold or even touch so I go back home to be rid of it, to cry and write down everything I know. -TERESA BARNES it might have struck you when you bent in the evening, scrubbing mud and mildew from the linoleum speckled like grass, working scrub pads around chair trunks and table legs in the kitchen under that yellow-gold oven lamplight, maybe you knew it first when you were waiting up until eleven at the table for something you knew wouldn't come, rereading old classics and drinking chamomile while the sky turned and pinwheeled overhead, keeping time like clockwork while each blade of grass and tree-leaf shimmered: you needed to wake up to see — heaven had changed its coordinates, and they were pointing straight at you. -TERRI VINEYARD -MARGIT BOWLER