Vivienne Popperl

What I Miss

–after Arianne True’s “Seattle Sonata”

It’s hard to be in love
with Portland these days. So much
is broken, disjointed, so little
makes sense. I still feel at home
in my neighborhood, though. The trees
in the park across the street still
whisper and tower and sway.
The London Plane trees still dance
their static ecstatic dance
in the early morning sun,
kick up their branches under the light’s
caress. Homeless men and women
still sleep on benches, tucked
under coats and tarps, still linger
while joggers and small children
in strollers pass.

‌                           Maybe what I miss
is my youthful optimism. I am not surprised
by the tents, the trash, the bike parts. I am
not surprised by the stumbling bodies,
the hopeless faces, the ragged clothing.
I am in shock that I am still living
in this neighborhood and that in real time
we seem unable to rescue real people,
help them pull together
the frayed edges
of their lives.

Vivienne Popperl lives in Portland, Oregon. Her poems have appeared in Clackamas Literary Review, Timberline Review, Cirque, Willawaw, About Place Journal, and other publications. She was poetry co-editor for the Fall 2017 edition of VoiceCatcher. She received both second place and an honorable mention in the 2021 Kay Snow awards poetry category by Willamette Writers and second place in the Oregon Poetry Association’s Spring 2022 contest “Members Only” category. Her first collection, A Nest in the Heart, was published by The Poetry Box in April, 2022.