Poor Memory Afternoon
(Wallowa River, Minam Canyon)
I can never remember what they call you -
But you look like a loon, and you float on the river like you own it.
Begins with a … begins with a … Where’s the darn book?
I know it’s with the ducks. I know it is.
Page, page, page… how could I forget? Male merganser;
poor memory afternoon.
Living on the dry side, yet
wet on wet on wet
thunder over the mountains
Beaver Gulch . . .
After the Nez Perce war
.. when the survivers of the Joseph band
…. were dying in "the hot country..."
Yellow Wolf got homesick,
.. returned from "the Queen's country"
….. and visited an old friend, A.C. Smith.
A.C., having sold his tollbridge at Minam,
.. and finding lawyering slow in the county
… took a contract to deliver rural mail.
Riding together, from Arkansas Hollow
.. to Winslow they had to sidehill a mile
…. and a half above solid beaver swamps.
As I travel that route, today, I note,
.. a beaver will have to pack tennis shoes
… to cover that same dry stream reach.
Trapped out for cash money, this stream
.. down-cut twenty feet of accumulated silts
….. and livestock have completed the job.
Inside historic stories, lie many
.. smaller tales of humanity and change,
… of ecological disasters and greed.
And I wonder how my days and toils,
.. might be chronicled by more than
….. the hawks and squirrels I have served.
--R.Anderson
Camp Creek
In the old days
.. when horses were still just food
... there were people here
….. learning... how to live on this land.
Perhaps, life was harder then
.. certainly it was a bit simpler
… food, shelter, water, amusement
…. were abundant... so were big bears.
Travel was different, too.
.. The dogs and women
... carried everything important.
…. Men... were guarding and hunting
Villages moved in good weather
.. for a few hours each day
… over open ground . . .
…. There were old people and young.
The land revealed secrets then,
.. in the first and last red light of day,
… mid-summer's spires of fire,
…. green gentian blazed on the hillsides.
The people remarked then
.. on the spirits of medicine women
…. watching the land they loved
.. and the people's observances of it.
-- R.Anderson, Wallowa
We deliver
Winter on the Wallowa waterway, sunny and cold and
All those rednecks and long waders in the river, silent for once.
Winter steelhead are coming. You can track migration by
the herds of dirty pickups and stockdogs parked and panting anywhichway.
It’s nearly noon. In a cloud of gravel and dust,
The faithful FedEx driver pulls his shiny white truck to a sudden stop ‐‐
Leaps out! Fishing rod in hand, he takes an uncharted break.
You could get lucky too: Lunchtime, winter, Minam canyon.
Kathy Bowman, Joseph, OR
on the way home (road hazard)
squish. squish, plop. squish, stop.
yank on laces - one shoe off -
hightop-mud-bare-foot.
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by sending a note to staffordpoems at fishtrap.org
Last Chance Creek
Deep in the Wallowas, in the good old days,
.. the last Audubon's bighorns held out a long time
Competitive grazing with domestic sheep
.. guaranteed the loss of the old natives . . .
….. poaching, disease and low thrift from lack of food
We thought grizzlies, indians and wolves were problems
Swamp Creek
Cowboys named this place, frustrated with driving cows.
Beavers used to reign here with marsh and pond,
.. sedges and willow carrs, teaching steelhead to jump,
… and otters and mink amused crawdads and mussels.
Nee-me-poo left huge shell middens, cached couse
.. and flaked keen basalt tools while waiting for game.
Trading beaver for guns and pots guaranteed their demise.
.. marshes and ponds disappeared, stream down-cut,
… steelhead grew rare, everything that survived was grazed
….. by multiple classes of livestock for fire control.
It takes a long time and a glacial shift of attitude to repair
.. what was wrought with inattention, greed and short sight.
Where else on this landscape have we applied as much,
.. and forgotten . . . the grass belly deep to a tall horse,
… open pine woodlands sprinkled with dryland willow,
….. filled with walking grouse, game and abundant roots?
An ecological eye seems to see in depth of time
even as i can hear... keening in the wind through the trees.
--R.Anderson Wallowa
the first ice has long come and gone.
still the river ruffles its way down-valley
and not all plants have put up the dormancy sign.
in-between times stretch on, and we pretend
everything is just as we wish it, not just as it is.
the second ice has come and gone; perhaps... snow tomorrow.
spirit of your place: wet rocks
in an act of faith, someone is walking over the river rock
where your shadow has passed -- where a thousand geese
have blessed the place with chants in your honor.
many travelers have stopped, puzzled by what might yet be,
and many still will. it is a test of promises. who passes?
the next traveler kneels to bait the line, hoping to hook Fate.
Kathy Bowman, Joseph, Oregon
Spirit of Place is one of a number of poems readily available at the Friends of William Stafford website. To explore more, see www.williamstafford.org/spoems/index.html
Hurricane Creek
There is a reason it's not called "Hiss-icane Creek..."
.. and it's not because "She" comes doddering with a stick
… or brings candy-canes to the little children . . .
Once, on a long, hot fourth of July
.. many of us were trapped high in the alpine cirques
…. when Mother Nature boiled fiercely across Hurwal Divide.
Rare things live, way up there...
.. mountain goats high on the peaks, black swifts behind water falls,
…. limber pines, carcajou... sometimes even stranger scents in the breeze.
Deep in long cold winters
.. a wind boils from the mouth of that canyon
… enough to raise the hairs on the back of my neck... or blow them away.
R.Anderson, Wallowa
