Willawaw Journal Summer 2017 Issue 1

Missing My Sister

It’s like calling your friend’s new phone number
after she moved out of state, only to hear
“This number is no longer in service.”

It’s like caring for your tender geranium, the only one
with those unusual wine-red, velvety blooms;
you are too late–one cool fall night does it in.

It’s like trying to start your beloved, but stalled companion
of a car, first using jumper cables, then a push in neutral,
but nothing can get it going again.

It’s like pulling up your winter pants,
so loose-fitting they almost slide off your hips;
last year you lost–not knowing how–pound after pound.

Brigitte Goetze lives in Western Oregon. A retired biologist and goat farmer, she now divides her time between writing and fiber work. Her web address is:  brigittegoetzewriter.com. 

Evergreen

wick in the forest

oblong clearing gives air
enough gripe to paint fire here

saved from one blaze a hemlock
destined for your casket will be stripped

of its skin and cut into lengths
for intentional burn

loggers on a taco break
lean against their rigs

or climb onto a sheepskinned bench
to chug a cool one from the tote

they hoist and set the hemlock
return home to their fires

this evergreen
how long ago it was planted

to furnish and frame
the last best house for you

Quinton Hallett writes and edits from her rural property in Noti. She has three chapbooks and her first full-length collection, Mrs. Schrodinger’s Breast, was published by Uttered Chaos in 2015.

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.