National Poetry Month #6: Traveling the Rivers of Washington

I wrote this poem as I listened to the names of the rivers in Washington state. As I traveled across a good portion of Washington state today, I photographed the rivers.  Today I saw the Columbia, Skykomish, Wenachee, Okanogan, and Methow.  Above is the mighty Columbia

Traveling the Rivers of Washington

In Washington state

 rivers flow out of the mountains,

connect to guide travelers,

 merge with the ocean,

and roll on to the Columbia.

Coastal Indians paddled the Nisqually, Nooksack, Quinault;

Northern bands camped on the Kettle, Colville, Sanpoil, Okanogan;

Explorers relied on the Spokane, Yakima, and Palouse;

Missionaries journeyed close to the Touchet, Tucannon, and Walla Walla;

Locals love the sound of Methow, Pend Oreille, Puyallup;

Wynoochee, Chehalis, Skykomish, and Elwha;

But when it comes to spelling them-

My favorites are Green, Snake, Lewis, and Rock.

Christy Woolum

National Poetry Month #5: House or Home?

When does a house become a home? I am such a nester I can make my car, a motel room, a guest room, or an RV home in no time. Home is where your husband, family, dogs, and heart is.

He Has Lived In Many Houses

furnished rooms, flats, a hayloft, a tent, motels, under a table, under an overturned rowboat, in a villa (briefly) but not, as yet, a yurt. In these places he has slept, eaten, put his forehead to the window glass, looking out. He's in a stilt-house now, the water passing beneath him half the day; the other half it's mud. The tides do this: they come, they go, while he sleeps, eats, puts his forehead to the window glass. He's moving soon: his trailer to a trailer park, or to the priory to live among the penitents but in his own cell, with wheels, to take him, when it's time to go, to: boathouse, houseboat with a little motor, putt-putt, to take him across the sea or down the river where at night, anchored by a sandbar at the bend, he will eat, sleep, and press his eyelids to the window of the pilothouse until the anchor-hauling hour when he'll embark again toward his sanctuary, harborage, saltbox, home. -Thomas Lux

National Poetry Month #4: Ask Me

Palouse River at Palouse Falls

I love this poem for so many reasons. Every time I read it, a different layer of meaning emerges. I always love what the river says.

Chewack River, Methow Valley

Ask Me

Some time when the river is ice ask me

mistakes I have made. Ask me whether

what I have done is my life. Others

have come in their slow way into

my thought, and some have tried to help

or to hurt: ask me what difference

their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say. 

William Stafford

Spokane River, Spokane, WA

National Poetry Month #3: Tulips

As I prepare this evening for a spring break trip to the Skagit Valley of Washington state I am thinking of tulips. This is a perfect selection for this evening.

Tulips

BY A. E. STALLINGS

The tulips make me want to paint,

Something about the way they drop

Their petals on the tabletop

And do not wilt so much as faint,

Something about their burnt-out hearts,

Something about their pallid stems

Wearing decay like diadems,

Parading finishes like starts,

Something about the way they twist

As if to catch the last applause,

And drink the moment through long straws,

And how, tomorrow, they’ll be missed.

The way they’re somehow getting clearer,

The tulips make me want to see—

The tulips make the other me

(The backwards one who’s in the mirror,

The one who can’t tell left from right),

Glance now over the wrong shoulder

To watch them get a little older

And give themselves up to the light.

Source: Poetry (June 2009).

National Poetry Month #2: Advice to Writers

How could Billy Collins have known how I work as a writer? I clean, weed, sort, drive, sit still, then write. I love this poem.

Advice to Writers

Billy Collins

Even if it keeps you up all night,

wash down the walls and scrub the floor

of your study before composing a syllable.

Clean the place as if the Pope were on his way.

Spotlessness is the niece of inspiration.

The more you clean, the more brilliant

your writing will be, so do not hesitate to take

to the open fields to scour the undersides

of rocks or swab in the dark forest

upper branches, nests full of eggs.

When you find your way back home

And stow the sponges and brushes under the sink,

You will behold in the light of down

The immaculate altar of your desk,

aq clean surface in the middle of a clean world.

From a small vase, sparkling blue, lift

a yellow pencil, the sharpest of the bouquet,

and cover pages with tiny sentences

like long rows of devoted ants

that followed you in from the woods.

I wish I could say I took the photo. I give credit to Sarala and you can find the original photo here as she references the same poem. As a teacher I never have a bouquet of yellow pencils.

http://sarala.aminus3.com/image/2009-05-14.html

Celebrating National Poetry Month: #1 Lineage

In previewing a new literature series at school today I discovered this poem. I fortunately picked up a strong lineage from the grandmothers on both sides of my family. Above is Grandma West and my brother at our house on Portland in Kellogg. Below we are with Grandma Woolum in Spokane.

Lineage

BY MARGARET WALKER

My grandmothers were strong.

They followed plows and bent to toil.

They moved through fields sowing seed.

They touched earth and grain grew.

They were full of sturdiness and singing.

My grandmothers were strong.

My grandmothers are full of memories

Smelling of soap and onions and wet clay

With veins rolling roughly over quick hands

They have many clean words to say.

My grandmothers were strong.

Why am I not as they

Margaret Walker, “Lineage” from This is My Century: New and Collected Poems. Copyright © 1989 by Margaret Walker. Reprinted by permission of University of Georgia Press.