i

sitting on a comfy couch before the big bay window
marveling at Mama Nature’s scenic slide show—
First comes hail then sleet and finally snow falling
as the wanton wind carries me upstream
past waterfalls ferns spruce and cedar
then up Old Columbia Highway to Crown Point
where I watch snow evaporate in white smoke
rising from a pulp factory polluting the spawning
ground of the sacred salmon and sturgeon

ii

sipping tea in the Daly Café in downtown Portland
after feasting on a salad of eggplant and tuna
then browsing in Powell’s Book store
and worshipping the written word
I purchase “The Confessions of Nat Turner”
and walk out into Portand rain
without an umbrella in the Pearl District
where the year ends with friends
at Huber’s Bar & Grill celebrating

FREEDOM!

tomas 08

The pale half moon
with her ghostly silver halo
hangs in star studded sky
smiling at the quiet casas
sitting on the hill
as the urban river flows
through the canyons
winding its way south
to the border
where on the other side
lights flicker
like diamonds in the dark

The poets’ blood is the poets’ ink of inspiration

TALEQUAH

I am a darker son of the Pacific Northwest
born in Seattle’s Swedish hospital
baptized in glacier cooled Lake Washington
raised in the wild with mountain goat, cougar
deer, brown bear and marmot
home fed on the word made fish:
trout salmon and sturgeon

My Vision Quest began in the Olympic rain forest
and the misty Cascade mountain range
where I met my black grandfather, a sharecropper
from Mississippi, a Washington pioneer
meditating on the summit of Mt. Takhoma
with Chief Sealth, savior of white settlers seeking
a new life in the ancient woods of the Northwest
on the sacred waters of the Salish nation

I delight in sunlight dancing like diamonds
on rippling surface of Dalco Passage
where man meets his maker and makes amends

I witness the Blue Heron standing on one leg
in stunning silence in shallow water
then darting to spear a fish that slips down
her gracefully long flexible neck
into her feathery full tummy

At dusk the ferry crosses Puget Sound in twilight
as tides and currents pace the passage of sun and moon
tiny swallows swoop in from the sea nesting in nearby alders
At low tide clams squirt sea juice from beneath the barnacled
rocks and wet sand

At dusk honking Canadian geese cruise close by
marauding raccoons squealing on the hillside behind
the hot tube where Carlos smokes his Cohiba

I drink my Columbia River wine as black smoke rises
from the campfire drifting into gathering clouds

At sunrise the ferry idles between log pilings at the dock
where I sit on the bridge of Carlos’ ship sailing
into the wind as currents carry me away from land
and loved ones to the open sea

tomas

I open the door to
embers falling like snow

Sky is bleak & black
Sun is eerie red

Santa Ana winds sweep
ash & cinder

Cosmos collides
with karma