Poems for spring by Coast Weekend readers

Published 9:00 am Tuesday, April 16, 2024

”The Last Ferry”

By Jennifer Nightingale

Before there were bridges, ferries knitted us together

Now there is only one left on the Lower Columbia

Her name is the Oscar B and she crosses the river

Every hour on the hour and costing only six dollars per car

Her engine hums and thrums and she turns on a dime

Carries papermill workers to Wauna and Volunteers

To the Coast Radio and Oregonians stocking up

On plum jam, fresh eggs and rainbow chard and cheeses

From the Puget Island Farmers Market

When the mighty Columbia was the highway

Settlers built many villages, displacing the Chinook people

All along both sides of the river banks

They built stores and mills and made

Steaming bowls of clam chowder and cups of coffee

Canneries, fishing boats and kitchen gardens

Before the bridges were built

Ferries crossed up and down the river

From Longview to Rainier, Megler to Astoria,

Cathlamet to Westport, dodging currents and sand bars

Fog banks and rusting ships from foreign ports

Hauled, potatoes and corn and smoked fish, apples, and bing cherries

Uncertain immigrants who didn’t know the local language

Idealists who wanted to build a communal world

Angry men who wanted to chase the Chinese out of town

Now there are bridges where the ferries once ran

Welcome to Oregon! Welcome to Washington

Log trucks, pickup trucks and little squat cars

Follow one another and pay no attention to the river below

Just another stretch of highway surrounded by girders

Except the Oscar B

She still moves across the water and back again as steady as a drum beat

It’s the only ferry left on the Lower Columbia.

Her captains keep an eye out for the unexpected

While her passengers snap photos with their cell phones

On the last ferry on the Columbia

”Concerning Spring: A Poem in Two Parts”

By Robert Michael Pyle

Cold One

Maybe it’s just me: my old man’s bones,

my scrawny ribs, nothing to hold the heat in.

Hot water bottle on my lap in the car,

heater ruined yet again by mice. In my bed

no more cozy cats, thanks to the coyotes.

I hug a stuffed lynx to my chest.

Winters are famously short here

with little frost. Yet this one goes on and on,

windy, wet, and gray, even unto Easter.

Oh, it’s a cold one. Or is it only me,

never readier for the sun?

Spring Forward

Everyone gripes about changing the clocks

and the hour of sleep they lose each March.

Fella says, “I don’t care which way they go,

but they ought to make it all the same.”

Lawmakers agree, but can’t decide to or fro, so don’t.

That’s fine by me. I like Daylight Savings. I like

the clock to change, to turn the hands and make it so.

Ever since I was a boy, I’ve loved those long

vernal evenings. Still do — the earlier the better.

That’s when the hour “lost” comes back to me, with interest.

When time comes and the change goes the other way?

I’ll be ready then to Fall Back, into the arms of autumn.

Spring Forward! What better call

for taking the whole dang thing around

one more time.

“Seeds”

By Beverley Wallace

I am a seed

if you plant me

I will grow —

to know the sun the wind the rain

the devastation of an insect

feeding upon my body

I will survive

to become a flower

of beauty and fragrance

A seed is a prayer in disguise

waiting to be planted.

“The Immigrant’s Dilemma”

By Irene Martin

What do I gain from displacement?

What do I give up? What do I retain?

What anchors me in my DNA

That I cannot let go?

Enmeshed in my genes are:

Family sayings; dreams of school friends;

The smell of maple trees budding in spring;

The barn loft in summer, fragrant with hay;

Chickens crooning in the henhouse;

Eastern woodlands rich in fall colors; white winters.

Tangled in those chromosomes are

Notions of kindness, of civility, long-term friendships that yet endure,

And an insistent sense of right and wrong

Not always congruent with present reality.

Immigration tests the limits of DNA.

How do we change into someone else, and remain ourselves?

“Spring CAN Be Far Behind”

By Florence Sage

The kids next door have been let out to play.

Their summer shouts and squeals are back,

breaching the windows I opened today

inviting soft warm air into the house.

It’s 70 in town, not a whisper of rain, the day

after the Ides of March and before Saint Pat’s,

after many long stretches of heavy wet skies

dappled with a day or two of good sun, this is great!

I try on last year’s shorts.

The lawn will need to be cut.

Someone hangs laundry on a line.

Daylight will stretch across the sky

past seven with equinox two days away

and workers get home before dark.

My pent-up dog and I will go for a walk

in a meadow by a forest we favor

and he’ll settle his belly into puddles

deep from all that steady rain and bathe

and wiggle and sigh and roll ecstatic

in warm wild-growing grass and juicy shoots

and this time my socks might stay dry.

Let the pollinators out there be urged by the sun

to emerge from the puffer-coat midnights of March

and nectar at noon on the glorious white blooms

all over the pear tree in my yard

and trail pollen around the waiting branches

so maybe this fall some fruit for a change.

Get with it, butterflies and bees and your kind

before the temperature plunges again

and some north coast gale downs all the petals

emerged in good faith once more in the sun, hopeful

like us, as we dig out our garden tools, trusting,

on a day like this in the middle of March,

fools that we are,

that spring can’t be far behind,

forgetting what April can do.

”Coyote’s Child”

By David Campiche

It creeps upon you

Like a mother coyote

Hunger gnawing soft bellies

Her kids in winter

Stealthy light

And the feral sounds

Log trucks racing down Tucker Creek Lane

Gears snarling, windshield blades scraping on cracked glass

Brakes squealing on the corners, the truck racing on

Left here with rain on a battered tin roof

Over the white hot kiln

Tap, tap, tapping

No color yet in the sky

Five in the morning, plenty early

Flames hissing down the brick chamber

Like sliding a shotgun shell into a 16-gauge

Like waiting for the first birds, their brilliant green heads

Their broken winged fall

You 16 — how’s that, you long years ago

Slap away those sad memories

Remember mother coyote

Stocking through bare barked alder, bigger hemlock

Padding out a message, fur soft

Resilience

That only the blind hear

Alone now, feeding the flame

Dawn at the dragon kiln

Me and you, coyote

Just me and you

And ghosts barking in the rain

“As Days Grow Longer”

By Dayle Olson

Look how dependably

one day follows another,

the moon pulling the ocean into the river

then releasing it,

like a parent interrupting

the upward arc of a child mid-swing.

Fat little fish find their way

down hidden creeks,

leaving familiar beds

to swim in the silvery euphoria

of migration.

Along the greening banks

soft air stirs the bees,

whispering ideas of nectar and honey.

Osprey and sea lion

journey back to their coastal home.

The river turns another page

in the book authored when poetry

was spoken

by trees as tall as mountains.

“Saddle Mountain Winks”

By Katy Paz

I sit within the folds of an overturned tree.

Drink up the roots and sing me a lullaby as I cast my soul to the sea.

Is there anything that the promise of spring cannot cure?

As I sit, I realize that I have unwrapped the gift of a still mind.

My heart beats in time with the sun.

The nearby snow-topped peak of Saddle Mountain reminds me that winter is not quite sleeping yet. It winks at me as if to say, “don’t tuck your winter coat away just yet silly.”

A skinny dip or a chunky dunk may be a tad optimistic for this season.

I laugh like a child.

Bliss.

As I dip my fingertips into a waterfall against the sand, I am reminded that I am alive.

In that moment I am healed.

A buffet of colors dances merrily across my vision, a waltz of splendor and magic.

The sand twinkles as if glitter has been strewn across a thousand elementary classrooms.

A canvas laid out by the greatest artist in all of time and history.

Nature.

A lone crab’s leg basks lazily in the sun and I’m reminded to not take life too seriously.

I smile.

“Oregon Spring”

By Wendy Wolf

After the fierce winter storms,

after the winds and rain,

and the ocean churning cold and grey,

signs of spring softly sing all around us.

Delicate green shoots,

the promise of flowers,

splashes of yellow and fiery pink,

tiny blue violets tucked between rocks …

vibrant color in the mist

like flicks of paint from an artist’s brush.

The elk, with their dense chestnut coats,

call and gambol.

Soon, spotted calves will arrive,

their mothers already pregnant,

ready to give birth

in this season where the young

are more likely to thrive.

The herds are nomadic.

They want what we all want —

Food, safety. Companionship.

Freedom.

They live peaceably alongside us;

their existence, a gift,

like the sea lions, the whales,

the eagles and hawks.

It is never too late to embrace this

kinship. Start now, this minute.

Inspiration is nurtured by compassion

and awe.

I think perhaps the beginning of the new year

should not be in January; it should be in

the spring. Where fresh starts

and possibilities are all around us.

”A Crescent Moon”

By Becky deVries-Wong

A crescent moon in the dark night sky.

Above the ocean hung so high.

No stars were seen, just the moon so bright.

The ocean, like ink, lay still and quiet, sleeping tight.

Along the sand the grasses swayed in the still of the night.

The crescent moon alone in the dark night sky.