"Pacific Northwest Poems"

Arriving From An Odyssey

They were there
In ice silkened
And silent solemnity
Eternally postured
and awaiting my return
Saint Hood, Saint Rainier
As twinned pyramids
And sentinel gatekeepers
Of the Pacific Northwest
Paramount and panorama,
They were there
Awaiting my return...


The Trees

Barren and leafless
Stand in sculpted groupings
Along the banks of
The Lewis River in December,
Days before the solstice
And with promises
Of noble Spring green
Soon to shield
The lone Birch barked white
Their dormant dance surrounds
In the riverlands of Winter sight
As late migrants
Ring the air crisp
And birds on travel
Wing their mottled sounds
Slip-skimming the frozen grounds
In streams above the hunters
And their trophied towns...

The Logs

Laid side by side
Strapped in with iron chains
Upon beds of logging trucks
Which rumbled and thundered and
Swooshed along the roadway.
The logs, down and dead
And boughless now,
Once trees,
Whose last rustling notes
Now merely echoed faint
Reverberations on the breeze.
And on the memories of the leaf
And the green clustered jewels
Of a thousand sails
Once glimmered in ocean skies
Now brown ghost dibblers
Trip-dancing across the frozen sward
As the loams of Spring
Call soft the leaves of shard...