That Sweet Portland Symphony

These bridges, every one
like a band of big music:
St. Johns a flute.
Broadway a long red marimba.
Steel a slide trombone.
Fremont a half-moon harp
famous for its tight stringing.
Burnside, out of tune
this year, is getting
a new drum on its bass surface.
Up the river, Morrison and Hawthorne
sing a duet of open-deck grating
that when you cross
even your tires can’t help
non-stop humming.

Previously appeared in the Portland Tribune (Sept. 21, 2007), and most recently in Walking Bridges Using Poetry as a Compass.

Biting Scientific Observation

Embedded in the walls
of the old limestone
train station, two
hundred million-year-old
shark's teeth and other Jurrasic
ammonites hook
all forty-eight third graders
in this, the same September,
they cut their curiosity
on where they fit
into the wider mouth of the world,
and I--their guide this one day--
slip into my porcelain stall,
praying their collective attention
span will be longer than my zipper.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to OCTE Bowl of Stories IV: Teachers as Writers (Oregon Council of Teachers of English One-Sentence Stories, 2006)

Poem for First-Year Teachers

On Amtrak once, all the way
from Portland, Oregon
to Vancouver, Washington,

where we get off to sketch
an old riveted swing bridge,
a storyteller half a window high

informs our corner about the teacher
just retiring from the experience
of this soon-to-be-fourth grader:

At the party, Miss Hadley
brought in pictures, pictures
of her first day teaching school
twenty years ago when she wore
her black hair in long braids.

When she moved up
from second grade to third
ten years later, she started
wearing glasses.

And then there was Miss Hadley
when I met her in September.
And you know what?

You could really see it in the last picture—
It wasn’t until this school year
Miss Hadley started looking like herself.

Forthcoming in Portland Magazine, Editor Brian Doyle. Also appears in Walking Bridges Using Poetry as a Compass.

Bridges That Open Like Oysters

It is more than sand that gravels.
People always asking, How long
will that bridge last?
Broadway, Burnside, and Morrison:
all three bascules bridging
the twentieth century,
all three beneficiaries
of countless redos:
debrided surfaces,
new stainless steel bearing joints
and now tiny wires implanted
to track stress and strain.
Protected from silt and too much salt
and attended by at least one
good tender, no telling
how long succulence
will remain succulent,
or when an oyster will gulp for air,
opening, opening, opening
for the last time—
tight muscles no longer stopping traffic.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of Windfall—a Journal of Poetry of Place, in which this poem first appeared. Thank you too, to Looking Glass Bookstore for publishing it as a bookmark. Also appears in the third edition of The Portland Bridge Book.

Rain you want to steer clear of

For Lynda Pilger (September 6, 1964-May 27, 2004) & her companion, Bear.

is any rain marching
through downspouts
wearing tin boots,
making it impossible
to concentrate,
if you had a living room.
Rain singing tenor
in winter’s opera,
if you’ve a sore throat
and a box of Smith’s
Brothers cough drops
is more than you own.
Rain you want to steer
clear of is any lake
tossing an SUV
with two-hundred-seventy
horses across the Morrison Bridge
where a pedestrian
and her dog no longer walk
under an umbrella
shaped like the world
cut in two.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Street Roots, in which this poem first appeared..

And Why Would the Ross Island Bridge Present a Problem?

Ten minutes into First Avenue,
one works his way through a trail of seventy.

Reaching my elbow, he says, “My mother is here
with me today, in case a bridge presents a problem.”

My safety record in the social studies business
couldn’t be better. “Which,” I ask, “bridge might that be?”

Looking like the especially privileged in our walk of plenty,
blonde hair, blue eyes, skin unblemished, he says, “Ross Island.”

“Tcch,” I might have said, “that’s a bridge so far south
we will not walk that way—no need to worry.”

Instead, I ask this eight-year-old a question
he answers in a voice so pulled down by gravity

it causes my cross beams to sway: He says, “My father
jumped off one side of the Ross Island Bridge.”

Solar Panel

Ask me if I could cover
this up, our walk between the
triptych and the strawberry
sundae at the St. Johns Burgerville
and the festival of grass
at Cathedral Park where we
sat and watched three workers climb
the St. Johns’ main cables, where
this boy named Mitch—no taller
than a regulation railing,
asks Have you ever noticed
how our fingers are like solar
panels, the way they soak up
all this light making them grow?
Then he widens his left hand,
rolls it slowly, over and
over, knuckles and nails to
inside wrist, palming his share
of the only noon sun I carried
around in my pocket longer
than one summer.

Extra Credit

Dashawn and a half-dozen others
were driving me crazy.
Since I’d walked them
from Front to Albers Mill
and the Greenway,
they’d practiced
non-stop
their best duck-call-adapted-
for-Willamette-geese:
Waaaaaack-waaaaack-waaaaack.
So, enough, I said,
about the time
we reached the far side
of the Steel Bridge
and a real McCoy gosling
snaggled-footed with fishing twine.
After the rescue,
I said, Good thing,
Dashawn, your calling
or the geese might not
have told us their troubles.
Daelonz looked over at me
and said he’d helped out, too—
by telling Dashawn to quack
in the first place,
which everyone confirmed.
Walking back, Dashawn said
we’d also have to thank
Tye, who had taught
Dashawn his very first
quacking lessons,
back when he was little.
Another reason why
I love these third graders,
the way they pass on blame
when I least expect it.

Appeared in Portland Magazine, Editor, Brian Doyle, Winter 2007.