Portland - My Home

By April Curfman
The Portland Upside
May 2009

(Photo by Julie Kelly)

Mountain - spectacular
Webbed feet - vernacular
I was born here

Rose Festival - a vision
Hood to coast competition
Heritage formed - year after year

Washington Park, the trees
Ladds Addition - rose - perfumed breeze
Visitors from far and near

The Columbia, The Sandy, The Willamette
Water overflowing or coming down wet
Bridges from there to here

Jantzen, Intel, Meier & Frank, Boise Cascade
Tom McCall, NW Natural, OHSU, Portland State
I am proud of what’s been achieved here

Lacey’s Bomber, Roses, The Old Spaghetti Factory
McMenamins, The Bite, Izzy’s
Good friends, good times, good cheer

From Union to MLK,
Beaverly Cleary to OMSI
From Horses to Max - does the driving for us
From Logging to “The Silicon Forest”
Portland’s history brings us together - here

The churches, The Arlene Schnitzer, Oaks Park
The Saturday Market, The Grotto, “Portland after dark”
The sounds I love to hear

Neither Mount St. Helen’s eruption,
Nor the occasional congestion
of a freeway connection
(with the possible exclusion
of a botched Trailblazer solution)
could distract from the
attraction
of this treasure of seduction
My Home
Portland
I was born here.

©2002

_____

April Curfman worked for NW Natural for 23 years, co-facilitates a support group for Parkinson’s Disease and enjoys sharing her poems with a Poems & Coffee Meetup group.