What pleased me today?

What pleased me today?
The first small handful
Of raspberries from the garden
My morning coffee sipped in the car
A silky smooth rush of acceleration
On route 26 driving west
A tuna sandwich
Leaving work an hour early
Mexican food with my wife
Greetings from the dogs
Short nap spooned with Emily
A report from Corvallis
On successful organic chemistry final exam
A small wedge of aged cheddar
On ritz cracker
Robins in nest on back porch
Lapsang Souchong tea
The evening air when I let the cat in
The wood grain of the library table
Where I sit at laptop to write
The touch of keyboard
This
Doing this


by Frank Vehafric

Late Evening

The moon hangs low in the sky.
A gleaming golden scimitar
suspended just below a shining Venus,
it lingers close to the horizon
as though wanting to touch
with crescent arms
the belly of the earth.


The realms are close tonight,
evoking desert sands
and ancient gods.


From planet and moon
an inverted question mark
forms against a deepening
purple sky.


But here, at ten o’clock
on a western summer evening
is a moment not to question
but only to absorb,
to really see,
to form lips
in a blessing and a prayer,
to breathe in
the essence of a scimitar sky
and inhale the purple
of being alive.
-Suzanne Graham

After Work

After work
And a day of driving
With stiff groaning turns of wheel
Lift rusty hood of old pickup
Hinged with springs that squeal when raised
Add power steering fluid to low reservoir
Truck built 1968
The same year I graduated high school
Even though older, I have fewer leaks
But more miles


by Frank Vehafric

Energy Footprints

You can see footprints in the sand

Some are small, some are grand

There are other footprints you can’t see

They are just as important to you and me

They measure the energy you and I use

And convert it to the land you and I abuse

If everyone had large energy footprints like the USA

You would need more than one earth to contain them today

A small energy footprint is good you see

To make the earth fit you and me

-Barry Kennedy

Meadowlarks

Yesterday I read
that meadowlarks
are an endangered species
I hadn't known - - -

Though they do not
populate Portland
where I now live

they inhabit my heart
three notes ascending
a trill descending

morning songs from my
childhood in the high desert
that made my waking up a happy time

How I wish for them
to awaken
my grandchildren
and my great grandchildren

and all our relations

-Margaret Kirschner

Soup

You know this slow place
It's where you go when making soup.
Soup is a slow place.
Soup has a slow pace.
Soup all mixed up
And colorfully blending,
Seasonally intending,
Sluggishly rendering; soup.

You know in your heart
What you're head cannot divine
The moment you place the ladle
Deep into that pot of summer
Vegetables and swirl
That last twist of pepper down
Down into the brew.
There in the lazy spinning
You see Thyme
Leaving the patterns of your life.

Your nose knows.
Your eyes close to savor
The images of later
When you'll bowl this bouquet
Break and dip the rosemary bread of peasantry
Until the rich color of tomato
Soaks in paced by deep inhalation,
To honor and control your salivary response,
Raise your favorite spoonful
To advancing lips and begging tongue.

Swallow slowly
Savoring the wallowed confounded
Vegetable mead
You have concocted from memory
Over the years of dreaming
The life of soup.
-Ron Crete

Grief

Ancient legend states
“When a just person dies
God cries two tears
And they reverberate
throughout the
universe.”

If this is so--
do you comprehend
why the oceans
are encroaching . . .

After Auschwitz
Buchenwald
Dachau

And now Darfur?
-Marcia Myers

Scraping Our Bowels

I heard the hum of the big diesel engines first.
The sun made the gravel barge glow.

Ancient rock scraped from the bowels of the mighty Columbia.
Scraped and dug from pits that never heal.

Like a picked scab on a schizophrenics arm,
Chewed from our banks, our protective brush discarded.

Open sores on our landscapes,
Bandaged with the fluff of hollow words, and empty promises.

Open sores on our land.

Open sores on our hands.

-Jeffrey Kee

Oregon Glaze

The snow made things brighter.
Nine inches in the Tualatin Mountains.

Add an inch of ice, make it 10.

Everything had a glaze on it.
Like the sugar water we froze on a salmon before shipping.

The wind moved and the trees crackled like the electricity in Young Frankenstein.
I fell a couple of times, checking it out when I should have been inside.

The ice crust would hold my 200 plus lbs in some spots.
Other places I broke partially through, pushing my balance back and forth.

I chipped the ice off the door of the car.
Started it up and melted things out.

When I got back to the house, I watched a robin fly across the yard.
It lit on the car, joining three others.

Drinking the water drops. Off the hood and windshield.
Some stood underneath snagging water drops as they dripped off the stabilizer bar.

I hoped I didn’t have a leak in my radiator.
I took down a bowl of water and set it on the car.

The structure must have been wrong because they preferred the single drops on the hood.

A little water must lube a robin’s colon, much sign was left.
Its raining now at 4:30, but it sounds like another day at home tomorrow.

Maybe I’ll write a poem.

The 8th. Things look a bit more icey out there today. A thicker glaze.
I looked up our road and noticed the leaning hawthorne was now touching the ground.

I heard some crackling up in the woods, but by the time I looked out everything was still again.

A long crack again as the neighbors non-native dropped about a 10 inch limb that bounced on the power lines and then blocked Riverview Drive.

If I went down to move it, I may not make it back in the house today. If we tried sledding on the cardboard today, we might end up in the Channel.

A robin sized bird flew across the shiny whiteness and into a tree below us. Crack and there went another 3 foot section of limb.

Kays got a number she called, apparently building trucks is very important to the Germans. Nothing planned again, I have to choose what to do.

Get up, build a fire, check the water, make some coffee, take some pictures, contemplate life, ah to be 40 again.

There’s a Towee freaking out cause he’s got a little piece of ice froze to his tailfeathers, hanging about an inch from his pooper. If he doesn’t stop twitchin this could be the end of him.

The Flicker made his first appearance, slipped into my view when I was checking out the Towee. I really should knock the ice off the feeder perches. Don’t know if I could make it back.

The young thrush doesn’t seem to be moving in and out of the feeding and watering area like the other birds. He needs a big thaw.

We all need a thaw.

-Jeffrey Kee

On The Job

On the job
We walk through
New buildings, punch lists still
Taped to elevator doors
And old cluttered corridors
Basements crowded with detritus
From loading docks, laboratories
Filled with graduate students
Wielding pipettes
Cork bulletin boards in hallways
Newspaper clippings
So old, yellow and cracked
Advertising seminars so long ago
The speakers may be dead by now
Every once in a while
An unused room
A freezer rattling in the hall


At the top of a long flight of stairs
A door open to the roof
Step out, just from curiosity
See the view from the top
Bridges over the Willamette
From Ross Island to Fremont
Mts Hood and St Helens
Almost cloud height here
The mist wraps around us
We stand
Torn away
From the day’s work


by Frank Vehafric

Tadpole Nursery

Wow!

Must be hundreds of them.

Fat little bodies wriggling

Their itty, bitty tails

To dig into their mud home.



It’ll be awhile

Before they’re full fledged frogs.

They have some incubating to do yet.

Imagine the sound of joy

When their bullfrog voices

Reach maturity.



I’ll have to come back here

For that symphonic croaking.

-Evy Kristensen

Camelia Rain

Even though the sky is clear
it has been raining from the camellia bush
as a brilliant Stellar jay knocks drops
out of the pink blossoms.

The bright drops fall
from the petals and the jay
thinking nothing of it
tips more blossoms.

The jay flies away
thinking nothing of it –
the wind comes to chill
the bright blossoms.

-Dennis Bleything

The Long Canoe Quest

The first day of summer
we hit the water
with dog, canoe, shorts,
good books,
one and a half paddle,
a small electric motor,
a battery that worked
and one that might.

It was a glorious time!

We saw silent owls,
big, swift unimaginably elegant herons,
duck pairs so faithfulto oneanother
their dance mesmerized us!

We saw beavers cutting across the stream,
occasionally smacking a tail
so loud in the quiet green
it sounded like the universe cracked!

It was a Quest
beyond words.

-Kurt Kristensen