October

Rooster Rock State Park. Standing on what, in Spring, is the riverbed: this time of year, with the river low, it's a wide expanse of drying sand. The wind blows steadily. We lean into it and walk upriver. Rivulets of dryer sand come flying over the surface at us, staying ankle-high.

Turn and look back. Down on the river, the kite-sailors' wings rise and fall over the horizon like monstrous birds flocking. The rivulets run away from us.

I remember to tell Martha about the vultures a couple weeks ago. Above the 82nd Avenue train station, I counted 46. Not wheeling, as they usually do, like in a cowboy movie -- they were more rumbustious than usual, like crows mobbing together, flapping their wings, going every which way. And not anchored: they were drifting south. I've never seen them do anything of the sort, and I don't know what to make of it.

Now, worn out with the wind and the sun. Wondering.

We walked back, carrying plastic water bottles, a quart Pennzoil bottle, two small plastic bollards, an energy drink can. Martha took a stick and threaded the bollards and and cans on it, and carried it before her like a scepter. "I'm a new age shaman!" she said. "Woo."

October.

Good night.

Pocked and Pounded Silver

We drove upriver on the Washington side, crossed at Bridge of the Gods, and drove back down the Oregon side. It was very dark, and raining the whole time, so we only got out of the car a couple times. We hadn't been up the Washington side for a long time: we pulled over at Beacon Rock, and a couple other places. At one viewpoint, high up on the palisades, we could see up some fifteen miles up the river till it vanished in the rain-dim: each headland lighter colored and less distinct, and shreds of cloud tangled around hills' throats like scarves. The lightest thing in the landscape was the river, a pocked and pounded silver, much brighter than the sky. Mt Hood never showed his face.

Just diddled along, not trying to get anywhere or do anything. Stopped at Bonneville and looked in at our friends the sturgeon, their ruffs of gills and their dignified barbel goatees, their dull little eyes and slow sad undulations. When they open their mouths, a huge pouch suddenly appears under their necks: it's all very strange and rather Jurassic feeling.

Cold, cold and wet, but a beautiful day, in its fashion. We paid our toll, $1.00 in quarters, at the Oregon side of the bridge, and the bridgekeeper wished us “Merry Christmas!” Across the way was a nativity scene. I thought of Cheryl Strayed walking up to touch the bridge, at the end of her trek, and of the original Bridge of the Gods, sunk now by Bonneville, and I thought of just how many stories any one place can hold: as many as it needs to, really. Like that great unexpected pouchy fish mouth. Anything goes in.

Natural History

The rain, a thick boxer who never goes down,
sucks air for another round. The dirty gray sky

is a tarp tied down on a pickup load
of stained mattresses and plastic toys: the scraps

may flutter but nothing's coming loose. Maybe
there's work in Oregon. Maybe not.

A thrash in the river, like a snag but moving
slowly into shore, something huge

but invisible: a sea lion, or a sturgeon
striking at a school of -- something, that

spatters the water like black coins. Time
was we would gone down to the water

hoping to see wonders. Today we hunch
our shoulders and back off to the spine of the levee:

anything that hunts small helpless running things
is no friend of ours.


In response, not very obviously, to this Morning Porch post