“Tender Currencies” by Scot Siegel MoonPath Press – 100 pp — $29.95

On a recent weekend, a day trip to meet our son’s new in-laws didn’t go as planned. Due to car trouble, the excursion to reach our destination took six hours instead of two, and we ended up ditching our recalcitrant vehicle, after-hours, at a repair shop in Wilsonville.

We didn’t get back home until 2 a.m., after renting a car at Portland Airport, the only place conducting late-night car rentals. I slept for only a few fitful hours before getting back up at daylight.

While brewing my morning tea, I thumbed through a new volume of poetry called “Tender Currencies,” and discovered that the third poem in the book was inspired by a traipse through a nature park in – wait for it – Wilsonville.

It was a too-soon reminder of our misadventures during the previous 24 hours, but I guess I can’t fault the poet for that.

By day, Scot Siegel is a city planner who works in the Northern Willamette Valley. But he’s also a prolific and widely published poet, who centers his work on natural landscapes, family, love and the passage of time.

The very first piece in this new collection is called “High Country,” and it begins with these alluring lines:

“I need to find a different line of work,

One that measures progress in footfall,

Elevation gain and descent, through transects

of biome and microclimate…”

Indeed, throughout these poems, Siegel embraces landscapes and water sources – lakes, rivers, and “jade-laced falls.”

He writes also about weather patterns and climate change.

And he ponders not just his own aging but, more generally, the passage of time.

Making repeat appearances in a scattering of pieces throughout “Tender Currencies,” Past, Present, and Future are characters with their own personalities and whims – although, Siegel notes, that “Truth sometimes occurs when Past, Present, and Future all sing in the same key.”

In another poem called “History, the Homemaker,” Siegel assembles a long list of history’s multi-faceted attributes. Among these are:

“History is hoarse from having to repeat herself.”

“History knows all your secrets; she is the headmistress at the School of Hard Knocks.”

“History leaves the door open.”

Many of these poems are gentle exhortations to pay more attention to the world around us, and to the feelings we keep bottled within. In a poem titled “The Rest of Our Lives,” the poet addresses the 21st century angst that can afflict all of us from time to time with these lines of solace:

“When you ask, where shall we live

And how do we afford it?

I want to say, we will be Earth-rich,

Not house-poor.

We’ll tend a community garden,

Not a poorhouse of monthly payments….”

I find Siegel’s idea of putting “principle back in ‘principal’” attractive – it’s an attitude adjustment, he suggests, that can accrue beneficial results.

So I’m trying to hold onto that feeling – at least until I get the bill for my car repair! 

The Bookmonger is Barbara Lloyd McMichael, who writes this weekly column focusing on the books, authors and publishers of the Pacific Northwest. Contact her at bkmonger@nwlink.com