The Coming of the Toads

A Notebook – Since 2007

Tag: Willamette River

  • River Town

    I live in a river town, know
    my way around, walk
    here and there and won’t
    be nobbled, neither bounder
    nor leaper, foot after foot
    forge forward, as need be.

    Someone offers me a lift,
    and forgetful I get in,
    but befogged where
    this drifter gets his
    directions, mindful then
    I alight and walk home.

    I’ve yet to learn to keep
    quiet, tho no longer tip
    the cup, and what books
    I wrote won’t remain,
    my purpose no longer
    easily to entertain.

    Moonlight spills on streets
    silent rivers of summer heat
    cool night but rivers don’t
    sleep and walkers walk
    to avoid being driven
    to despair with no air.

    This is not a myth I am
    with you all the way,
    each stream wiggles
    down to the big rivers,
    the sound of the water
    breezes thru dry brush.

  • November Day Along the River

    How are you? You are how
    this is too easy
    a still gift of photographs
    almost like a real letter.

    You like flowers, flowers like you, like
    Peonies, purple green red yellow mopped hair
    Marigolds, red orange bites
    Red geraniums in a real clay pot
    and those little white hanging threading flowers,
    I don’t know their name, whispery white.

    I am 1,000 characters
    all so small you can’t see them
    like tiny little squiggly bugs.
    You are 1 bodacious character
    like a lobster on the ocean floor under
    blue waves under an orange sky,
    or a swell cat, an orange tabby
    with blue eyes,
    who never scratches but purrs
    and curls in your lap for a nice nap
    on a hot sunny summer day,
    a sleepy breeze cooling powdery sky.
    Evening comes and a glass of white or red wine
    and dinner and the sun goes down
    and the moon comes up
    up and up and up and up
    so the path is lit.

    But now is not summer
    now is the beginning
    of a long winter
    without you.