Journal

Enough of Hate

Fear goldfinches, you who traffic in fear,
see how they cling to the thistle sock
flagrantly flashing bright yellow breasts,
fierce little fighters. Label them lesser,
point to their page in the bird book,
cite statistics till the crows come home:
they’ll go right on lifting our gaze to their light
as days darken in winter’s weak sun.
Fear the juncos foraging beneath our feeders,
whose flocks flaunt black hoods.
Distrust Eurasian doves–they migrated here–
and sharp-billed pine siskins pushing toward seeds,
insisting on staying alive, waving
their barred-wing flags. Above all, beware
visions, like this varied thrush brushing
white-frosted grass with her blue/rufus breast
igniting the Solstice. Already ice
is melting, soft as this morning’s white moon.

Bette Husted is the author of Above the Clearwater:  Living on Stolen Land (OSU Press), At this distance: Poems (Woodcraft of Oregon), and Lessons from the Borderlands (Plain View Press). She lives in Pendelton, Oregon.

Walking Tour at Maryhill Museum

—Queen Marie of Romania visits Sam Hill
   in the 1920s, at Maryhill, Washington

Centuries after the Columbia
carved a gorge through basalt,
I tour the region
where native artists inscribed a face
high above choppy waters,
She-who-watches.
Every item you admire encased
in this exhibit’s walnut cabinets
carries its own story.
You can browse my notebooks
where the brown ink seeps
my talent for design.
I look to the Irish for a braid
motif I stamp on everything
from thrones to cuticle cases.
I cannot wait for history to name me
the Warrior Queen. I confer it
upon myself.
My presence confronts this building’s architect,
a man with pride so far reaching
he fills his basement garage
with dozens of cars,
leaves orders for his coffin to stand
upright on the river promonotory
like a Pierce Arrow hood ornament.

Joan Maiers works with writers of all ages. Serving on the boards of the Clackamas County Cultural Coalition and the Friends of William Stafford, as well as for a national peace and justice coalition, energizes her writing muse.

Lynn Martin is an award-winning poet who has written Where the Yellow Field Widened:  Elegies for a Lost Child (1994); and Blue Bowl (2000). She studied Dante in Italy as a fellow to the National Endowment of the Humanities.

Solo Time

The chilly fresh air,
the clouds rolling in and out,
and Spring is where?

The bird song echoes,
the trees leaves whispering loud–
this is Oregon, my home

Cold but weirdly warm,
birds flying above in swarms–
this is the perfect life

Cassidy O’Brien is a fifth grade student at Chapman Hill Elementary in West Salem. She enjoys reading and laughing with friends.

Suppose Death, driving a black Dodge Ram

with custom chrome-aluminum wheels,
causes a multi-car pile-up outside of Tacoma
scoring two fatalities, then one more,
by forcing a target-bound woman off the road at Exit 234.

Suppose he barrels off at a rest stop
somewhere in Oregon. A toothpick hanging
out of the left side of his mouth
he lolls in the noon-day sun
against one of the wooden poles

supporting a plastic encased state map.
Death holds a cold cup of free coffee,
and scans his surroundings. Suppose
a thirty-something guy
with blond dreadlocks and empty eyes

crouches outside the restroom entry
next to a scrappy backpack,
a corrugated cardboard sign
and his angelic four year old son
scratching the dirt with a sharp stick.

Suppose the Grim Reaper, with a sly smile,
strolls over and slips the child a five.
The child puts the finishing touch
on his stick-figure super-hero,
lifts his head and gazes up.

Pushing silky curls from his brow
he meets the Reaper’s grimace
with a wide-open sun-bright smile.
Suppose Death, suddenly startled,
has a change of heart.

He abandons the Dodge,
pinches a red Porsche convertible,
jumps over its driver’s-side door,
settles into a white leather bucket seat,
and peels back out on I-5–

pedal floored, face windward, beach hair blown toward eternity.

Sandra Rokoff-Lizut came to poetry at the age of seventy-one and finds that it feeds her well. She has had quite a few poems published in fine journals. She is honored to be surrounded by a wealth of great teacher-mentors within a supportive poetry community.