Mighty River Sentinel

Mighty River Sentinel

“Brother of Air, Brother of Sun,

please tell our story, that we

may live in the brief wind.” – William Stafford

Now midwinter,

you journey southward—

trace the country’s frozen seam

till it splits open with shad, bass, bluegill.

Humbly we stand

beneath your lookout tree and gaze up

at your head and tail of blazing snow,

your noble profile and piercing stare

wild as the tossing river below.

With forward lean you lift broad shoulders

and stretch wings east and west

as one yellow foot grabs air,

then the other. You drop a bit

as if your heft cannot be borne

then ascend gracefully to stir the clouds.

Clutching your catch in craggy claws,

you return to your perch to feed.

O, majestic Eagle,

did our forefathers fall

under this very spell?

By Ellen Savage, Entry # 23

River Song/After the Ocean

River Song –
to be accompanied by banjo

 The Asif river tumbles
from the hills down to the plain
He gives a home to hawks and trout
The Asif is his name

Gravity and water play
A million-inning game
We called that game the Asif.
The Asif is its name.

The Asif meets the Ithad
down where the cedars grow
The cedars stain her water
and strain the melting snow.

The Ithad’s quite the lady
She curves, she coos, she smiles
She’s a house for bass and heron
As she runs her hundred miles.

The Ithad meets the Asif
In a wood that’s filled with game
With their arms around each other
they give birth to the Anayme

We sing songs about the river and
Its gods and lore and fame
We call it Mighty, swift and Strong
As if It had A name

As if a name could stop it
Or make it toe the line
But the name is just a lie like
You and Yours and Me and Mine.

Old Adam named the animals
And Eve invented Crime
But the one who laughs at all our names
is jolly Brother Time.

And everything’s a river
And everything is his
We love the things that aren’t real
And hate the thing that is.

By Lynn Hoffman, Entry # 21

After the ocean left town

last Saturday morning at a quarter past two
the tide left town and it stayed
we were mostly glad to be rid of its mess-
we cheered, though a few of us prayed

pressed for years by the weight of brine
protected from the vulgar air
everything once too gross to float
is lying open, dry and bare.

where once was heaving water
is now shell and sticky land
shortly to be wind-dried
then wind-buried in the sand

from the curve we used to call the beach
we look to where the water’s flown
at new real estate with ocean view
at retail space we’d die to own

soon the lawyers and the cops
will lay out borders: metes and bounds
we’ll compete with others up the coast
with their own dried up bays and sounds

of course we’ll miss our seafood
and children playing in the waves
and perhaps we’ll never notice
when new land turns into graves

or maybe there’ll be a moment
when the sea takes back the shore
when we cry and wish we’d prayed for less
and not poisoned life for more.

By Lynn Hoffman, Entry # 22

Reminder!

The Zumwalt Prairie Poetry Cache is a 10 year project to collect community and visitor poems about the prarie in all its aspects.

The collection - including a series of community poetry blogs and a physical art object cache box being commissioned from a local artist, also using the WCCTC grant - is inspired by Terry Tempest Williams essay "Buried Poems" in which a very small town is transformed by the discovery of buried poems.


Any form of poem may be submitted with no entry fee to ZumwaltPrairieCache @ gmail.com. Poems will be electronically published at the 2011 community poetry site www.zumwaltpoetry.blogspot.com. Submissions may also be selected for a chapbook at a later date.

Roll On Columbia: An Epilogue

Come Friends

Join my Journey

Swim in my current

Glide on my riffles

Run my rapids

Let time be empty

I feel the morning rain

dripping off the conifers

The icy glacial melt

awakens my thirst

I take a few deep breaths

and let Springs rise up from Within

My source is sourceless

My headwaters have no place of origin

Yet somewhere in the Canadian Rockies

I emerge

I gather cascading streams

And plunge downward

I slice through a canyon chute

I breathe water

I exhale water

My shorelines migrate

I change course on a whim

I no longer sit behind clay dams

I re-craft the wild cataracts

Priest Rapids, Dalles des Morts

The forest once drowned grows feral

Salmon spawn in all my streams

My tributaries

My contributaries

My visionaries

My Totems are here

Bears black and brown visit and play

Deer and Elk graze and drink abundance

The elusive Lynx stalks in the woods

Families of Otter frolic in my eddies

A pack of Wolves

unnamed unnumbered

howl moonfully from my bank

Beavers love-slap my water skin

Coyote dances on the cliff edge

Eagle flying blesses my winding course

I cross no boundary between nations

There is no Canada

There is no United States

My path goes round Roosevelt’s dam

I roam over the Grand Coulee

I spill wetness over Dry Falls

And where once salmon were halted

I now let them walk up my arms

My Friends,

I hope you’re enjoying the float

Perhaps you’ve seen the Osprey fishing

Perhaps you’ve heard the Loon wailing

Trust your journey

And should you see Woody

Please tell him

Yes indeed, I roll on

On the Hanford Reach

I feel the radioactive shock

Still cookin’ after all these centuries

I cough toxic sand and roll on

I meet my goddess river the Snake

She brings sweet cold water

More than I can breathe

We rejoin, we marry, we roll on

Today there are no tugs

No barges carrying gravel and grain

No merchant ships with cars and phones

No railways, bridges, or dams

No outfall pipes spewing waste

No dikes, riprap, or seawalls

Today I carry salmon smolts

on their circle of destiny

Sturgeon grow ancient in my sleep

I roll on

I hear distant drumming

I briefly linger in a pool

Coyote winks at me

I swirl a whirlpool in reply

I drop over Celilo Falls

once smothered and now alive

I roar over the rocks

My breath becomes Spirit spray

Ghosts of the River People

gather on my shore

They drum on Antelope skins

Dance the Salmon song

They fish the free-falling falls

Taste again the Salmon power

Give thanks to the Great Spirit

Retell the old Coyote tales

Coyote grins

and scampers away

Across my flank

In her garden of rock

She Who Watches waits

Her eyes shine on the River Souls

The remains of the dam

lie on my bed

I slowly grind the concrete

into round boulders

The turbines into sleeping rust

All buried in my sandy belly

I sail through the Gorge

I recall the last great flood

some centuries ago

when I carried the volcanic ash

when I was given a new path

Bridge of the Gods resurrected

arches her benificent back

River Souls amble across

I slide under her smooth shadow

I roll on

I bask in the snow-capped radiance

of Wyeast and Klickitat

who no longer hurl stones of fire

their jealousy now abated

Their beloved beauty St. Helens rests

Thunderbird rides on thermals above

soaring high on 10-foot wings

The Sky jumps with fire bolts

The Sun paints rainbows on slate

Wind caresses my shimmering skin

The once muddy Willamette

comes to me clear and cool

We swell over the marshes and sloughs

Hundreds of thousands of ducks,

geese honking, swans, and cranes

ascend and fly about

The cacophony is prayer

The prayer is wildness

Ghosts of the Street People

come to visit my shore

They linger and camp

under the stars in the black night

They rest in the peace of moonlight

They drink my holy water

without any filters or fear

They gaze at the salmon running

once a lucrative catch, now a sweet dream

Friends, please hold on

I am fluid might

I am rolling thunder

I am flowing free

The Corps no longer dredges my guts

I have washed the sand islands

built with my precious entrails

I roll on

I feel the pulse of the incoming tide

I sense the magnificent Ocean

I taste salt

I don’t want to mix

But I‘m drawn from Beyond

I make my way onto the bar

We clash, buck, and surge

We roil whale bones and ship masts

We spit dragon spray

Then I am Beyond

I dissolve in the swells

There are no dead zones

I breathe, the salmon breathe

I catch a current

I drift to where the Albatross fly

I dissolve again

and again

I feel the morning rain

dripping off the conifers

The icy glacial melt

awakens my thirst

I take a few deep breaths

and let Oceans rise up from Within

 

By  Frank Opila, Entry #20

Wanderings on the Zumwalt Prairie

Walk the prairie with me

when the call of the wild whispers

when the sunlight of the spirit beckons

when our path ambles through sparse pines

                                                                                       

The summer sun speaks

Waves of grass flow over the wildlands

Seasoned grass, bunch grass, grass that know their own strength

Grass that mingle with wildflowers, ground squirrels, and horned larks

Grass stretching skyward, where the red-tails soar

Across this grass-scape, Coyote scampers

A chorus of bugs chants insistently

The prairie sings a ballad

of the Great White Hawk

that swoops down with golden talons,

making spirits of ground dwellers.

The black beetle’s prayer rises with the thermals

on which the White Hawk glides

The wind stops.

Where are we?

Somewhere near the heart, I believe

My flute song rolls over the ridges

and floats down the canyons

There is no reply

Our inner song already knows

We listen to the stillness

The horizon drifts away,

gathering what’s left of the sun

A cool breeze wakens the earth scent in wolves

A great-horned owl begins her night quest

Elk shadows graze in the fading golden sky

We listen to the stillness

We fall asleep in the prairie’s dream

 

                                                                  By Frank Opila, Entry # 19