Poems for spring by Coast Weekend readers
Published 9:00 am Tuesday, April 16, 2024
- Spring blooms
”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.