After a long time away, I see Him again in Portland when crossing the Marquam Bridge (built 1966). There’s that the same gasp of disbelief: surely He’s painted on the background, the backdrop of a geological magician’s prop, a copy of Mount Fuji's perfect point. He’s dressed in a year long white silk kimono dangling over a hairy belly of vascular gorges, time-knuckled hill, firs, fast flowing water.
Seen again from a street in White Salmon, Washington (est. 1852) He's now a bent-back Iguanodon's thumb poking time, hitchhiking half a million years. From the back deck of Everybody's Brewing in the High Street He's the tooth of a frosted megalodon biting heaven's breast – four times since the Ice Age he’s torn at the darkening flesh. Now He’s still-jaw and mumbling about the next cataclysmic meal. Long before my white-faced arrival, the Multnomah tribe molded basalt into their myth. Now He’s Wy’east, son of Great Spirit Sahale. He threatens with thunder and strikes lightning spears at Pahto, His rival mountain brave. For the love of La-wa-la-clough, He and the Pahto burn forests and villages, and their feud ends with sundering of The Bridge of the Gods. Enraged at destruction and disgrace, The Great Spirit decides to teach all three mischievous children a lesson. La-wa-la-clough’s not given any chance to protest, she’s just struck dumb. Pahto strikes all three children into unforgiven stone, leaving behind the mountains as memorials. For millennia, Wy'East stares north at his old enemy, now known as Mount Adams; dreaming of his old love, now called Mount St Helens. Her Hellenic face has fractured and fallen, still frail. We choose Him to be in the background of our wedding, to be the natural wonder of our single day that is not even measured in stone or dormant magma. But measured by us with Him as a sharp, ancient, always active point of reference. Then I am back in Portland, five years since I started this observation; a few tides of snow and bird lifespans. He fills the view from the plane window: frighteningly close and massive in his tectonic contours and tone of long-time.
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AuthorA poetic-essay style blog with a limit of 365 words. 365 like the days of the year - my name being one of those days! Archives
March 2020
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