In My Pocket

By Julianna Waters
The Portland Upside
April 2010

Photo by Julianna Waters

I took you with me in my pocket,
folded but not crumpled,
to see the canyon and the mule deer,
to hear the Imnaha River
sing to rock, grass and limb:
rush, rush, don’t hurry
rush, rush, don’t hurry.

I worked my way up a crumbling path.
The sun, barely awake,
had not yet poured it’s warm glaze
down the canyon wall.
Even with you in my pocket,
I was afraid of falling.
When I reached the top
I felt winded and hot,
but proud.
You said nothing,
but, as I sat down to take in the view,
I could feel you there,
paper thin and folded against my hip.

After a bit, I stood up, turned and faced the wild rose forest.
Teasing out the paths that centuries of cattle had
beaten into the sod with their heft,
I joined one that headed toward a verdant saddle,
hoping for water.

The sun rose higher and
warmed the breeze, but not much.
When I looked down at my boots,
hoof prints mingled in the hard dirt:
cow, deer, and elk,
and I thought to myself,
“how lucky are we?
me with my eyes and bones here in this land,
you in my pocket,
on this cloud free day,
with summer just around the bend.”

_____

Julianna Waters is a therapist and writer who lives in Portland with her husband, terrier and two cats. She’s an award winning songwriter, co-founder of Heart and Hammer Music, and lives for long, slow walks in wild places. She can be reached at juliannawaters@comcast.net


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Defining Love for The One I Love

By Frederick G. Rodgers
The Portland Upside
March 2010

Watercolor by Joyce Lovro Gabriel

You have often said that the definition
of love is not to be found in any dictionary.
At last, I have found myself in total agreement
with you on that. It happens rarely, but you and
I recognize it instantly when it does.

Making the effort to define this in private and
in public word, it flies out of that cage of words
like a canary, dandelion-colored, seeing that
the door was again left open. You are correct:
love for another , if genuine, always defines--
-- or redefines itself like a clove-colored wren
abruptly chirping on a twig over to our right.


_____

Frederick has for a decade been retired from teaching English at all levels in the Portland area. His poetry has appeared in Portland Review, West Coast Review, Alchemy and Mentor.

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“Mooon”

By Jillian Starr
The Portland Upside
March 2010


Photo by Marlene Andrejco

“Moon.”
Your dad’s finger points into the dark sky, teaching a name.
You echo it back, maybe an extra “o” or two.
“Mooon.”

Morning whispers you awake, and over breakfast
(Skin smeared shiny with yogurt and banana)
You turn palms toward daylight and ask,
“Mooon?”
Your new word moves me to memory
Margaritas beneath a warm Chicago crescent, just before the plus sign
A bursting and anxious moon, nine months full
Blurry moons of sleepless nights, of breastfeeding and bottles
Moons that lulled us both into the luxury of sleep.

I dab your chin with a bib and explain simply
about daytime, nighttime, the sun, the stars.
You smile. Maybe even understand.
Then you outstretch your arms and joyfully wonder, “Mooon?”
And your word floats up like love floats
All those perfect o’s, like eggs in an ovary
spilling into daydreamed moons of tomorrows
Wide-eyed Christmas eves
Giggling little girl sleepovers
Fevers that fold you into my arms
Late night talks, heartbreak with ice cream
These precious movements of life held permanent in our forever
Mooon.

_____

Jillian Starr writes screenplays, poetry and short stories and co-produces Time Out: The Mother of All Comedies. You can find out more about her at jillianstarr.com


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Oft’ in life we haven’t clear direction

By Charles Walsh
The Portland Upside
February 2010

Photo by Arnetta Guion

Oft’ in life we haven’t clear direction
And thinking can deprive us of connection
With our own happy intuition’s source,
Obscuring the simplest obvious course.
But when we commit to know our true desire
And make the choice that sets our hearts afire,
Life must follow our charms with all it’s zest
For we’ve become the part which all love best.
We know this well but when we would control
We drain the life of what’s inspired our soul;
Dither not with dread practicality,
Step forth alive without conditions, free.
Despite all schemes that we’ve been dreaming of,
What more have we to offer but our Love?

_____

Charles Walsh is a wine lover, hiker/climber and poet. A Portland native, Charles was raised and educated here, though most of his professional life was spent in projects across the United States and Europe.

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The blooms

By Andi Yates
The Portland Upside
February 2010

Photo by Sitta Cole

The blooms

Drop

And love stops

growing

When there are toomanyroots in a small container.

(capture) love - [cage it] and love will faint in the
breathless air, grow brittle and crumble to an empty dust
that falls away, lost…. Forgotten in its own network of
entwining

Beginnings

and

Endings

Better to cradle love on a woven frame of no preconceived
boundaries. Let it send its new shoots to the warmth of the
sun and new roots to places unseen. Watch it slip through
the weave of its holder and mold a cover so complete
yet…….

Free to express and to move as it must to flourish to bloom

And bloom again…………………

<an attempted tribute to ee cummings>

_____

Andi was born in Louisville, KY, and migrated to Oregon in 1974. She found her poetic voice at 17 and has been writing lyrics, poems and short stories ever since.

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Heart Song

Faye Powell
The Portland Upside
February 2010

Photo by Faye Powell

There is a language of the heart,
Bequeathed to us with our very first breath,
Breathed into us with our very first cry,
Possessed by us through a mother’s kiss
and a father’s smile.

There is a language of the heart
Soft as a breeze against our cheek,
Gentle, quiet as a baby’s dream,
That knows no chains of hate or fear.

Light as cherry blossoms on an April morn,
Sweet as a lover’s sigh just before dawn,
Our native tongue, our first heart song,
Leads us back to our own true home.

_____

Faye Powell is a retired librarian who writes fiction, nonfiction and, occasionally, poetry. She can be reached at phaysee1@gmail.com

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Submission of the month

Misty firs

By Mike Aspros
The Portland Upside
January 2010

Photo by Sandra Milner

In winter, fir trees sing dappling droplets
their pointed needles combed them from fog.
You must only listen as a hundred notes
drop and echo, hitting the paper leaves.
Songs of forgotten words,
you know that they are prayers
that only trees remember
and they tell it to you again.

Mike Aspros is a native of Portland. In addition to writing poetry, he enjoys co-facilitating events within Linnton’s environmental group, and preserving Forest Park while building a community of forest stewardship.

Sandra Milner is a novelist, poet, aspiring photographer, and also a freelance journalist and food advocate.

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Wintertime in Oregon

By Bruce Mock
The Portland Upside
January 2010

Photo by Julie Kelly

I like the Wintertime in Oregon

her gopher holes
and short, green wheat,
and seagulls in the breeze;

her frosty grass
her frosted glass

and chipping ice from windo’ panes
and haze.

and skiers tracks
thru’ mountain trails
and rabbit tracks
on downy dales
and hail

and rain

and

crashing tides that
suck the sand
and
wear the cliffs
and
rocks that stand
and
waves that
break the jetties down

and
spray that streaks
the crests that foam,
driving wetness
through my bones.

and quiet nights
of crystal calm
that guard the gates
of Winter’s Home.

Bruce Mock is a lifetime Oregonian and lives in Southeast Portland. He is the founder of Seven Years of Plenty, a charity dedicated to feeding the hungry and rooting out the causes of poverty. He writes poetry about what he loves.

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In The Garden

Poem and photo by Julianna Waters
The Portland Upside
January 2010

Winter calls even the angels,
first to the dark
then the light,
gently,
preparing the soil,
inciting buried
seed, bulb and root
to head up.

Let’s head up.
Let’s wriggle and push our newness
through the dark pages of
December,
of January, then
into the transparent light of February,
March.

Let’s reach, pale green,
out of all that is moist and
necessary
for that sweet smell of a
lilac spring day,
and meet the angels there.
in the garden.
laughing.


Julianna Waters is a therapist and writer who lives in Portland with her husband, terrier and two cats. She’s an award winning songwriter, co-founder of Heart and Hammer Music, and lives for long, slow walks in wild places. She can be reached through: http://heartandhammer.com


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The Man Who Loves Trees

By Judith Arcana
The Portland Upside
November 2009

Photo by Julie Kelly

loves through the seasons:
bare trunk, fat buds, full green, wet red
and their names: sweet gum
cypress oak spruce willow maple
red bud forest pansy
and their parts: leaf cone flower
bark root branch boll twig needle
lacy fans of rough crochet, pods
like cigars, like rattling gourds.

He loves their cast-offs crisp on the ground
their sound under his boots on the trail
rustling, breaking down into dust.
He loves, later, their sawn boards:
wood, its grain a watery maze
polished, rubbed into light, glowing
still with heat from the heart of the tree
like his own heart, pumping dark liquid
out to the limbs, out to his own warm hands.


Judith Arcana writes poems, stories, essays and books. This poem, written for her partner Jonathan, first appeared in the Canadian journal STUDIO, online. Visit Judith’s website at www.juditharcana.com

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Leaf

Poem and photo by Mike Aspros
The Portland Upside
November 2009

A wind gust lifts
a maple leaf from its tree,
it hovers with clouds above the schoolyard,
falls like a heron to a pond—

skillfully without rippling the water.
The leaf lies face down
for many days,
far from the shadow of the tree.

The tree will always bloom new leaves,
but surely less yellow than these.


Mike Aspros is always wandering, looking, skirting the boundary line passing a “No Trespassing” sign following deer and owls through Oregon ash and white oaks. He may be reached at mike_aspros@yahoo.com

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Turning Leaves, Turning Inward

By Edie Sidle
The Portland Upside
November 2009

Photo by Julie Kelly

And so the leaves turn yellow—Fall is here.
The crisp night air refreshes and renews.
It is time for quiet introspection, listening to the quiet within.

The warmth of wool and fleece pulled from the back of the closet comforts us.
Putting away the picnic basket and the beach hat, we embrace the new season.
Fall is here… we are finished with our play… we are finished with our raucous laughter, we are finished with the carefree days.
It is time for wisdom, it is time for stories, hot cider and warm friendship. It is time for Fall.


For years, Edie has been involved in “business writing” but more recently has been exploring creative writing, even trying her hand at poetry. She may be reached at edeegee@yahoo.com

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The Chapman School Vaux’s Swifts

By Edie Sidle
The Portland Upside
October 2009

Photo by Steve Warner

Every September since the late 1980’s, the chimney at Chapman Elementary School in Northwest Portland is home to thousands of migrating Vaux Swifts, small birds who circle the skies before sunset as hundreds of people come to watch them file into the chimney for the night.

The Swifts spiral downwards, then swing up, up.
Their wings fluttering, a syncopated rhythm,
avoiding a million crashes, with something magical.
They play, they eat, they soar.
It is time to perch on the long column of the school chimney,
the dusk deepens.
Hanging tenaciously in the narrow darkness, now silent,
a thousand wings, now still.
They rest, they wait, forty thousand strong.
Answering to an unknown code, a silent destiny.
Then, the dawn breaks and the Swifts again fly up, up,
with something magical.
Nature’s song.

For years, Edie has been involved in “business writing” but more recently has been exploring creative writing, even trying her hand at poetry. She may be reached at edeegee@yahoo.com

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There’s a bakery where the library used to be,

By Judith Arcana
The Portland Upside
October 2009

Photo by Jonathan Arlook

In the fall of 2007, I asked Greg Mistell, baker and owner of the Fleur de Lis Bakery & Café in the Hollywood District, to donate a cake for an event. Because it was a literary event, our conversation led to writing. Greg mentioned he’d been an English major, a happy coincidence and perfect fit for a bakery located in Hollywood’s old library.

Perhaps because I’m a writer who eats a certain number of cookies each week, and perhaps because I live in an apartment above the new library, we wound up collaborating on a poetry-as-performance event, The Bakery Show, featuring local poets plus delicious dinners, drinks and treats from Fleur de Lis.

What with all that melding of words and bread, poetry and cake, I wrote this poem.

There’s a bakery where the library used to be,

so the baker is an English major, and his
gingerbread’s shining lemon glaze rhymes
with apricot scones, cinnamon rolls, thick
brownies demanding haiku-size bites. And
those fat doughnuts are classics, their holes
suggesting absent clues in mystery novels
whose pages flutter like flaky pastry around
sticky elements of the plot. Each berry tart
tells a story, each cookie’s a simple sentence
its crunchy sugar sparkles scattered like
commas through paragraphs, like dashes
for emphasis – and the very last crumb
on the plate is a period or exclamation point
or formally postmodern question mark.

When the baker is an English major, then
stoneground grain can be a metaphor, and
characters can be yeasty, strong salty citizens
who grow thoughtfully into goodness, work
to make it come out right, study recipes, learn
to combine necessary flavors and textures.
One character gets punched down but rises
shapes up, reveals a heart as rich as dark rye.
The narrator is sharp as a well-kept knife
every chapter seems a slice of real life, all
its ingredients mixed well. All the words are
folded carefully into fiction, memoir, sonnets
cooling on stacked metal trays, shelved there
like the books were, always bound to feed us.

Judith Arcana writes poems, stories, essays and books. Sometimes she stops writing and walks over to Fleur de Lis Bakery for cookies or bread. Visit her website at juditharcana.com

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The Numerous You

Poem and photo by Mike Aspros
The Portland Upside
September 2009

You are a Ginkgo leaf that knows its way; letting go,
you trust the ground to catch and hold.

A Swainson’s Thrush stomps dirt for a kernel,
with your weathered endurance of Bristlecone bark.

Like an elder Oak, in its stillness
with winter limbs, and bent elbows,
you embrace the helpless.

As the sun rouses geese from the reeds,
rejoicing, I love, I love, I love,

glowing on your face. People crowd around
and like a Marsh Wren’s outcry
they admire you.

_____

Mike Aspros is a native of Portland. In addition to writing poetry, he enjoys co-facilitating events within Linnton’s environmental group, and preserving Forest Park while building a community of forest stewardship.

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Watching a garden grow

By Mike Aspros
The Portland Upside
July 2009

Many arrived here as Mom did,
she from Fresno,
hands squeezing Oregon
rolled up in a magazine.

We relished firs and rivers,
watching moods of weather flexing colors.
Gaping at buildings spouting like dandelions,
pink and white basalt pillars,
edges of silvery gilt,
a few hovering domed cathedrals.

If I could,
would I flip a switch preventing newcomers?
I’d be the greeting party,
leading a ticker-tape parade raining rose pedals.
The city’s chosen you like a perfect strawberry.
Newcomers are needed to
cultivate the diversity of roses,
making room for new,
majestic things to grow
replenishing smiles.

Mike Aspros is a native of Portland. He enjoys co-facilitating events within Linnton’s environmental group, preserving Forest Park while building a community of forest stewardship, in addition to writing poetry.

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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.

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