I've lived my life in the lands of the Chinook jargon
Without knowing that I used some of the words
I was born and raised
Down in the lands of the Kalapuya people.
If I ever met one,
I probably thought they were from somewhere else.
Now I live in the high country
Up the Towarnehiooks from it's mouth above Celilo Falls
Almost to it's source:
Up near the high lakes of the Molalla tribes;
West of the Paiute;
Before the land drops to the south
Into Klamath country.
I come from many tribes,
Most forgotten,
And none from here.
My father's fathers were Kemi Saami
In the high lakes and forests of their country.
They lived among the siida families
Where were known as Kitka
Before the Swedish crown told his people
To populate the north
And turned my ancestors into christian Finns.
Now the Saami that remain on their land
Are mostly above the arctic circle.
Many of those that became Finns
Left to settle here along the Wimahl
From Celilo Falls down to the ocean.
Skookum, in the Chinook jargon,
Describes something that is strong,
Dependable, reliable or enduring.
It's used much like my English ancestors use 'stout',
And a little like my Finnish ancestors use 'sisu'.
I've lost the Kemi Saami word,
Though I have gone looking.
Sunday
Creeks
Many years ago, I was friends with a girl
who lived by a creek
just as it entered a park.
It was mostly lost in ivy
and blackberry brambles.
Another girl I knew
lived up where a branch of that creek
was barely more than a drainage ditch.
It tried to ignore the street as it ran long,
finding it's way down the hill.
Another, just beneath the hill,
lived by some tracks and warehouses.
Just behind her house a mill diversion,
hidden by cottonwoods and city planning,
rushed live a real river down towards its work.
One, who I often wrote, lived out in a suburb
in the hills on the other side of town,
where a stream came out of brushy grottoes;
offended and reclusive at the intrusion of houses;
Sneaking into their yards under cover of rain.
I briefly shared a house with a girl
Who lived where the channels wound muddily
Through deep ditches in the grass
Waiting indifferently for the river's tide
To fill up their mouths
Then I met a girl
who grew up in the mountains.
In a town trapped against a slope,
by the fork of a river
where it cut down out of a canyon.
But I met her somewhere else,
under another mountain,
where a creek had filled in a sandy bank with gravel.
It had long been her own special place,
but now she visited her mother there.
All those creeks flooded recently;
escaping from where we keep them;
rushing with murky water out into trees, streets, houses.
Afterward, they let back down again.
That's all.
who lived by a creek
just as it entered a park.
It was mostly lost in ivy
and blackberry brambles.
Another girl I knew
lived up where a branch of that creek
was barely more than a drainage ditch.
It tried to ignore the street as it ran long,
finding it's way down the hill.
Another, just beneath the hill,
lived by some tracks and warehouses.
Just behind her house a mill diversion,
hidden by cottonwoods and city planning,
rushed live a real river down towards its work.
One, who I often wrote, lived out in a suburb
in the hills on the other side of town,
where a stream came out of brushy grottoes;
offended and reclusive at the intrusion of houses;
Sneaking into their yards under cover of rain.
I briefly shared a house with a girl
Who lived where the channels wound muddily
Through deep ditches in the grass
Waiting indifferently for the river's tide
To fill up their mouths
Then I met a girl
who grew up in the mountains.
In a town trapped against a slope,
by the fork of a river
where it cut down out of a canyon.
But I met her somewhere else,
under another mountain,
where a creek had filled in a sandy bank with gravel.
It had long been her own special place,
but now she visited her mother there.
All those creeks flooded recently;
escaping from where we keep them;
rushing with murky water out into trees, streets, houses.
Afterward, they let back down again.
That's all.
Midwinter's Carol
When the year has fallen
And the light has gone
Through the cold we wander
Waiting on the dawn
Beasts lie in their barrows
Secure in what they've stored
We must toil all seasons
Uncertain of our hoard
Set aside our sorrows
To cut an evergreen
Stand it by the garden
To point our thoughts toward spring
Children in the kitchen
Craft their new year's vows,
Garlands, twists, and candles
To hang about the boughs
Makes a merry watchman
Standing by the lane
Across the yard we watch him
Warm behind the pane
Light at longest shadow
Warmth for young and old
Bright and green it glimmers
A beacon in the cold
When we come together
On midwinter's night
In the yard we'll gather
To set the tree alight
Bundled wood we'll offer
To build its warming blaze
And wish unto the new year
For strength and length of days
Come and join us as we
Sing around its fire
Pass the drink and lend your
Voices to the choir
Hold the small ones to you
For they are like the spark
That lights tomorrow's fires
To hope against the dark
And the light has gone
Through the cold we wander
Waiting on the dawn
Beasts lie in their barrows
Secure in what they've stored
We must toil all seasons
Uncertain of our hoard
Set aside our sorrows
To cut an evergreen
Stand it by the garden
To point our thoughts toward spring
Children in the kitchen
Craft their new year's vows,
Garlands, twists, and candles
To hang about the boughs
Makes a merry watchman
Standing by the lane
Across the yard we watch him
Warm behind the pane
Light at longest shadow
Warmth for young and old
Bright and green it glimmers
A beacon in the cold
When we come together
On midwinter's night
In the yard we'll gather
To set the tree alight
Bundled wood we'll offer
To build its warming blaze
And wish unto the new year
For strength and length of days
Come and join us as we
Sing around its fire
Pass the drink and lend your
Voices to the choir
Hold the small ones to you
For they are like the spark
That lights tomorrow's fires
To hope against the dark
Saturday
Summerfrost
[First drafted in September, lest we forget there was a summer not long ago]
You could peel the skin right off
This gone and wrinkled summer
Crossed with an early touch of cloudless cold
That pulls the flesh in close
From its sun-stretched skin
The waters are drawn down
Stored away low and tight
Far from wind-whistled cracks
Leaving the swollen sugars
Of a long hot summer
Clinging sticky under the surface
Waiting for that first frost kiss
Waiting for it
To get in deep and turn it bad
Stinking like nutmegs, wet and bitter
That you smell all the way up in your eyes
Drawn in, dried out and bittersweet
Like the whole world's a last-call come-on
'Eat me up, before I go wrong'
You could peel the skin right off
This gone and wrinkled summer
Crossed with an early touch of cloudless cold
That pulls the flesh in close
From its sun-stretched skin
The waters are drawn down
Stored away low and tight
Far from wind-whistled cracks
Leaving the swollen sugars
Of a long hot summer
Clinging sticky under the surface
Waiting for that first frost kiss
Waiting for it
To get in deep and turn it bad
Stinking like nutmegs, wet and bitter
That you smell all the way up in your eyes
Drawn in, dried out and bittersweet
Like the whole world's a last-call come-on
'Eat me up, before I go wrong'
Tuesday
A sack for catching Death in
Knot by knot, I'm tying up
a sack for catching Death in.
Half-hitch and half-hitch again,
until I close the net in
to trap the rogue inside.
My fingers found the woven rhyme
(Heave away, haul away)
of a sack for catching Death in.
Sometimes the jute burns the skin,
and sometimes it bites in.
I can spare the weave some drops of life,
I can spend out yards of time.
For that's the trick of twisting line
(Haul away you rolling king)
into a sack for catching Death in.
Don't be fooled if it's filled with fruit
and thrown upon my table;
or at the market, around my back,
low and dropping with potatoes;
or slick with slime and to the brink
with gazing, gaping trout.
I've caught Him within.
I won't let Him out.
You can smell the food,
why can't you hear Him shout?
There won't come a day that I'd be without
(You'll wish that you had never been born)
This old sack for catching Death in
a sack for catching Death in.
Half-hitch and half-hitch again,
until I close the net in
to trap the rogue inside.
My fingers found the woven rhyme
(Heave away, haul away)
of a sack for catching Death in.
Sometimes the jute burns the skin,
and sometimes it bites in.
I can spare the weave some drops of life,
I can spend out yards of time.
For that's the trick of twisting line
(Haul away you rolling king)
into a sack for catching Death in.
Don't be fooled if it's filled with fruit
and thrown upon my table;
or at the market, around my back,
low and dropping with potatoes;
or slick with slime and to the brink
with gazing, gaping trout.
I've caught Him within.
I won't let Him out.
You can smell the food,
why can't you hear Him shout?
There won't come a day that I'd be without
(You'll wish that you had never been born)
This old sack for catching Death in
Monday
The Silver Pull
It's time for you to go.
You can't always be trusted to know when it's time,
but I've learned the change in the air.
Metal, sweat, and wood charcoal coming off your breath and skin
tells me you've got maybe a day
to get down to your cave if you only want to use two legs.
Soon the silver will be in your eyes;
and the light. A flush in your skin;
the little tremors and the glisten
Rarely are you still here by then,
because then you'd have to leave without kissing the children.
But when it can't be helped,
you lope out the door with your head covered;
your arms and legs not moving right.
Once, during a cold and leafless young spring,
the kind that pulls on you constantly,
I tracked down there to be with that other you;
drawn by the five senses of your changing;
wanting into that other side of your awareness.
Somehow, I found your trace,
down to the rocky entrance that sheltered you.
With a tumble and fitful reachings I found my way in
through remnants of bird, rodent, cat.
All I found were mats of fur and grass
layered so strongly with the scent of your habitation
that I could smell my own intrusion.
You were not there.
The sounds of your breath and stamping outside
formed up from the silence, now that I'd stopped moving.
Backing out the tunnel, I found you
by the silver light of your eyes,
and your damp phosphorescence in the starlight.
You were dancing.
You pattered, hunched and swayed around your work:
movements of hips and waist and hair all over.
Parts of you gleaming unexpectedly as you turned to me,
as if the dimness masked unmeasured scales, horns, beak;
indefinite in the absence of light and examination.
You were not happy to see me.
Was that the emotion?
Was it emotion?
You approached, and dirt fell to the ground from your hands,
earth-soaked to the wrists.
Afterward we decided I should never do that again;
with no way of knowing the line between me
and my finger bones arranged at the threshold,
or my split thigh bone used to furrow shapes in the dirt.
As the seasons change,
so does your shape
and your place.
Sometimes, in the safety of the day,
I examine the things you've left at a site you've abandoned
to wash or blow away whatever you made:
bone sculptures, dirt maps, grass dolls;
wild twins to the crafts made by the unsilvered you.
But, oh, still you;
really, really you.
I thieve a grass doll meant for decay;
something to link me
to the world of you that only roots and branches
beyond the walls I bring everywhere with me.
I'm a thief, because I know you meant it to lie there
unowned.
You can't always be trusted to know when it's time,
but I've learned the change in the air.
Metal, sweat, and wood charcoal coming off your breath and skin
tells me you've got maybe a day
to get down to your cave if you only want to use two legs.
Soon the silver will be in your eyes;
and the light. A flush in your skin;
the little tremors and the glisten
Rarely are you still here by then,
because then you'd have to leave without kissing the children.
But when it can't be helped,
you lope out the door with your head covered;
your arms and legs not moving right.
Once, during a cold and leafless young spring,
the kind that pulls on you constantly,
I tracked down there to be with that other you;
drawn by the five senses of your changing;
wanting into that other side of your awareness.
Somehow, I found your trace,
down to the rocky entrance that sheltered you.
With a tumble and fitful reachings I found my way in
through remnants of bird, rodent, cat.
All I found were mats of fur and grass
layered so strongly with the scent of your habitation
that I could smell my own intrusion.
You were not there.
The sounds of your breath and stamping outside
formed up from the silence, now that I'd stopped moving.
Backing out the tunnel, I found you
by the silver light of your eyes,
and your damp phosphorescence in the starlight.
You were dancing.
You pattered, hunched and swayed around your work:
movements of hips and waist and hair all over.
Parts of you gleaming unexpectedly as you turned to me,
as if the dimness masked unmeasured scales, horns, beak;
indefinite in the absence of light and examination.
You were not happy to see me.
Was that the emotion?
Was it emotion?
You approached, and dirt fell to the ground from your hands,
earth-soaked to the wrists.
Afterward we decided I should never do that again;
with no way of knowing the line between me
and my finger bones arranged at the threshold,
or my split thigh bone used to furrow shapes in the dirt.
As the seasons change,
so does your shape
and your place.
Sometimes, in the safety of the day,
I examine the things you've left at a site you've abandoned
to wash or blow away whatever you made:
bone sculptures, dirt maps, grass dolls;
wild twins to the crafts made by the unsilvered you.
But, oh, still you;
really, really you.
I thieve a grass doll meant for decay;
something to link me
to the world of you that only roots and branches
beyond the walls I bring everywhere with me.
I'm a thief, because I know you meant it to lie there
unowned.
Sunday
Triangle Girls
Their fingers tink against the cloth-plates
as the fabrics feed under the presser feet.
The constant plink, plonk, tapping
of artificial fingertips like a hailstorm:
metal, plastic and rubber.
Row after row after row of fingers
rumbling under the knocking whine
of 10,000 needles rising and falling.
Each worker is as different as the array
of salvaged sewing machines they operate.
Most of them came in ships from overseas;
the castoffs of economic regress
Others were domestic models;
the castoffs from owners
eligible for upgrade.
Some, obtained in bulk lots at auction,
were second-run commercial gynomorphs
fed basic instructions and placed at their machines
next to armatures, operators, butlers and nannies;
until a government inspector primly requested
that they be clothed
in consideration of gender dignity.
The owners fed instructions to the repair closet
to dress all units during the next regular maintenance
in the various retro womens' apparels
for which the factory was known
(even the andromorphs and isomorphs);
which is how they got the collective designation of 'girls'
Their bodies rise neither day nor night.
Only their left arms feeding and arranging fabric
between needle strikes in the near darkness.
Occasionally they tilt their heads
(a built-in social feature)
to focus lensed, CCD or anthropic eyes
on their right hands moving
to cue the different thread toggles
of the master spools overhead
or on the bin of replacement needles.
It's just a gesture.
Their hands know the locations blind.
The owner and his family float somewhere
above the surface
counting profit and grumbling
about the two-thirds share the government takes,
which it feeds back to the consumers.
Someone still has to buy things, after all
even when they aren't needed to make or do anything.
Down below ground, in the factory,
the winders tighten the girls
with their steam-driven keys
skeleton-fit to each mainspring,
or fit to the spring-wound electric adapters
for those older models not powered by tension.
There are no heights to fall
down below the ground;
no oxygen to burn the clouds of lube dust
(nitrogen-only keeps parts from rusting);
and every single exit
is locked from the outside.
When destruction came it was by water
(All faults will settle given enough time).
A fissure opened for the fingers of the river,
feeling down deep into the subcity.
Consumers, dimly horrified, were duly evacuated
from their earthscraper tenements.
...but no one came for the girls
As the waters rose around their workstations,
few of them rose.
Some models followed deeper programming
to avoid hazardous conditions,
but when they found they could not,
they curled themselves up into tight spaces
and powered down.
Most just kept working.
A few adjusted their motions
for the added water resistance.
but most not.
A few attempted to repair
their misbehaving sewing machines,
but most not.
A few shorted out quickly,
but most not.
The owners were forced to build a new facility,
or lose their government license.
They couldn't replace the equipment
(The sewing machines alone
required digging permits in three states),
so they reluctantly abandoned their marketing claim,
"Assembled manually on vintage sewing machines",
in favor of a more conventional
molecular assembly plant.
If you have the right connections,
one of the owners' grandsons
gives secret tours of the abandoned factory;
diving down in small groups
to see the 10,000 antique robots
drifting in the wet dark.
A memorial where no one grieves,
because they paid good money
to say they spent it
on something unapproved.
It is (I have been told)
especially good for a date,
since some of the divers swear
you almost catch their eyes focusing,
when you're not looking directly at them.
[On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York, killing 146 garment workers - mostly immigrant women. The factory had become known the previous year as a center of a garment workers' strike, resulting in the formation of many union shops to address wage, hour and safety issues. Ultimately, Triangle itself was not unionized. The following year, workers were unable to escape the fire in large part because one of two exits was kept locked by foremen to prevent suspected theft of fabric in handbags, which were inspected daily. Crowds watched many girls jump to their deaths from 9th story windows, sometimes on fire, several stories out of reach of the fire ladders. The incident led to the passage of 36 workplace safety bills in the New York legislature, and the beginnings of acknowledging issues of workplace safety and workers' rights.]
as the fabrics feed under the presser feet.
The constant plink, plonk, tapping
of artificial fingertips like a hailstorm:
metal, plastic and rubber.
Row after row after row of fingers
rumbling under the knocking whine
of 10,000 needles rising and falling.
Each worker is as different as the array
of salvaged sewing machines they operate.
Most of them came in ships from overseas;
the castoffs of economic regress
Others were domestic models;
the castoffs from owners
eligible for upgrade.
Some, obtained in bulk lots at auction,
were second-run commercial gynomorphs
fed basic instructions and placed at their machines
next to armatures, operators, butlers and nannies;
until a government inspector primly requested
that they be clothed
in consideration of gender dignity.
The owners fed instructions to the repair closet
to dress all units during the next regular maintenance
in the various retro womens' apparels
for which the factory was known
(even the andromorphs and isomorphs);
which is how they got the collective designation of 'girls'
Their bodies rise neither day nor night.
Only their left arms feeding and arranging fabric
between needle strikes in the near darkness.
Occasionally they tilt their heads
(a built-in social feature)
to focus lensed, CCD or anthropic eyes
on their right hands moving
to cue the different thread toggles
of the master spools overhead
or on the bin of replacement needles.
It's just a gesture.
Their hands know the locations blind.
The owner and his family float somewhere
above the surface
counting profit and grumbling
about the two-thirds share the government takes,
which it feeds back to the consumers.
Someone still has to buy things, after all
even when they aren't needed to make or do anything.
Down below ground, in the factory,
the winders tighten the girls
with their steam-driven keys
skeleton-fit to each mainspring,
or fit to the spring-wound electric adapters
for those older models not powered by tension.
There are no heights to fall
down below the ground;
no oxygen to burn the clouds of lube dust
(nitrogen-only keeps parts from rusting);
and every single exit
is locked from the outside.
When destruction came it was by water
(All faults will settle given enough time).
A fissure opened for the fingers of the river,
feeling down deep into the subcity.
Consumers, dimly horrified, were duly evacuated
from their earthscraper tenements.
...but no one came for the girls
As the waters rose around their workstations,
few of them rose.
Some models followed deeper programming
to avoid hazardous conditions,
but when they found they could not,
they curled themselves up into tight spaces
and powered down.
Most just kept working.
A few adjusted their motions
for the added water resistance.
but most not.
A few attempted to repair
their misbehaving sewing machines,
but most not.
A few shorted out quickly,
but most not.
The owners were forced to build a new facility,
or lose their government license.
They couldn't replace the equipment
(The sewing machines alone
required digging permits in three states),
so they reluctantly abandoned their marketing claim,
"Assembled manually on vintage sewing machines",
in favor of a more conventional
molecular assembly plant.
If you have the right connections,
one of the owners' grandsons
gives secret tours of the abandoned factory;
diving down in small groups
to see the 10,000 antique robots
drifting in the wet dark.
A memorial where no one grieves,
because they paid good money
to say they spent it
on something unapproved.
It is (I have been told)
especially good for a date,
since some of the divers swear
you almost catch their eyes focusing,
when you're not looking directly at them.
[On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York, killing 146 garment workers - mostly immigrant women. The factory had become known the previous year as a center of a garment workers' strike, resulting in the formation of many union shops to address wage, hour and safety issues. Ultimately, Triangle itself was not unionized. The following year, workers were unable to escape the fire in large part because one of two exits was kept locked by foremen to prevent suspected theft of fabric in handbags, which were inspected daily. Crowds watched many girls jump to their deaths from 9th story windows, sometimes on fire, several stories out of reach of the fire ladders. The incident led to the passage of 36 workplace safety bills in the New York legislature, and the beginnings of acknowledging issues of workplace safety and workers' rights.]
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