"salish" poems
Not too distant beach tree sways in distance
Mandala Rorschach blot patterns dance like celebrating Salish drum circle
There's a hallow college sound of crime show to my left
Bickering with the occasional crush of,
**** my job is stressful."
A sleeping armadillo composed of quarks reflective within a drop of water
Fallen from the bottom-bulged North 49 canteen
A foot and 3/4ths away the snow-white generic of a ***** coffee mug formerly host to a Tetley green stands silent
Reminiscent of the eternal stillness of a mountain range
Fibonacci's name rings inexplicably from tilting branches
And I can't help but wonder if I would be grasping his hand in grasping a branch.
19 years alive and I can't help asking if I've grown-up too fast
Or simply grown into myself.
I feel old
young
and somewhere indescribable most of the time
and it's funny I cannot even fathom the length of 22 years.
A deflated balloon yellow like trend pants or sunrise sits like dejected missile
No longer screaming towards Gaza
No longer screaming.
A Holiday Inn Express pen sits with a ready-call number
Part of its mustang flame
If its quality of penmanship has any parallel to hotel service
Perhaps I'll stick with hostels.
Nov 29, 2012
Nov 29, 2012 at 2:34 PM UTC
Redds shine like new nickels on the dark river bottom,
salmon have returned to spawn the Deschutes,
navigating by primal memories written in DNA,
an internal Tom-Tom GPS wired in their brains.
Watching them struggle up the ladder,
consumed with a drive to leave offspring,
they are herculean athletes battling
the current and the inexorable pull of gravity.
Were these the fry I helped to seed four years ago?
A Squaxin woman told me once,
ghosts of her Coastal Salish ancestors
ride the salmon out to sea and home again.
Roe in these redds dream also of the sea,
their salty eyes and nostrils perceiving
spirits in secret claret-red kelp beds.
The waters ask only to be haunted again.
Feb 20, 2012
Feb 20, 2012 at 5:20 PM UTC
Lit this slash pile one week ago,
a small pile as far as slashing and burning goes
Since then it’s melted,
rained, and snowed
Unusual and erratic behavior for January
and February in this country
Country that the Salish would’ve known
to move out of before winter set in.
Shouldn’t be anything other
than frozen and buried in snow
but nothing acts now in the way
it used to, and no one can predict
what’s coming, yet we keep reporting
our guesswork like we know something,
still playing make-believe with our
ideas about control, specifically about
how we’d like to be in it—
maybe because we like the idea of
stability so much and wish we had it
despite our tireless irony.
And here is this little steam-pot,
this natural wonder of vitality and perseverance,
issuing one more quiet reminder
of how little we know of our actions
or the cycles they’ve started.
Feb 6, 2024
Feb 6, 2024 at 1:14 PM UTC
As the wave of worries crept beyond the cracks of the ocean floor.
Water levels rise and I call out for you. Help... please... help! But you told me: Swim on your own you don't need me!
As your words escaped the sea salt strangle me. Gasping- for -air... searching for you! Yet alone I reside in Poseidon's palace, surrounded by trees that once stood tall.
In the distance I see a home, our home, broken brick-by-brick. As the roof slowly caved in bit-by-bit. Misplaced memories scattered throughout... flashbacks from our happy home now engulfed by the seiche of the Salish sea!
Thoughts of thorough talks between you-and-I... you told me:
I'll always be by your side! Yet I'm still alone drowning in water that no longer surrounds me. Fatigued from your flares of fallacy!
Drained-drowned-crippled-crushed!
Mother... Father, where did you go?
May 4, 2017
May 4, 2017 at 5:48 PM UTC