Whisper of Wind
by Ruth Maletz
The whisper of wind in firs will take me home, faster than anything. Back to the cottage that my father built when I was small, set in the woods, up a long graveled road. He built a deck around three sides, built it around three giant firs as well.
My bed was tucked under the slanted ceilings of the loft, and there I dreamed of growing up and fame and gallant things.
On winter nights the rain drummed me to sleep, on summer mornings I woke to squirrels dropping fir cones on the roof and cawing jays in treetops far above.
The trees were my protectors and friends, the guardians of my childhood, my summer shade and winter sentinels. And how I loved them: fierce unfettered love with which I loved all good,
green living things.
The sound of wind in firs still takes me home, faster than anything. As memory's window opens, I am there, under their whisperings.
The Walk
by Lois Colton
Hand in hand we walk up the main avenue of the orchard. This corridor divides pears from apples, and we sample the sugary crispness of both. My daughter cradles her newborn son in a sling across her heart. Though fresh from birthing, she strides confidently through the familiar fruitwoods that surround the small cottage where she lives.
Laid out in neat lines, this fruit-growing forest rolls up and down the gentle hillsides. Tall grasses lie drying like hay after the field workers have ridden their mowers up the avenues and around the sturdy trunks that budded into fruit bearing limbs.
It's harvest time in Hood River County. Fertile orchards that fan up from the mighty Columbia buzz with the voices of Mexican men and women who make their living en las huertas. Today their Spanish chatter creates a pleasing sound track for our walk through the trees. Throughout the year these workers pick and prune and mow and water for the region's fruit farms, and I am grateful that these cycles of harvesting survive around us.
I'd seen these farm laborers in the Laundromat the week before. Together we were doing a different kind of work. I folded my three-week-old grandson's warm blankets and sleeping gowns next to Margarita from Michoacán and Marisol and Isidro from Guanajuato. Sus hijos played contentedly under the wide table where we folded. Clean t-shirt, jeans, sheets, and towels stacked high alongside my grandson's infant wear forming colorful towers of clean laundry.
I marveled at the precision of their folding for each crease got hospital corners care. I listened to their Spanish and wondered how they kept themselves so immaculate in the rough little workers' quarters that circle the apple and pear fields they tend with the same respectful attention.
On our walk my daughter and I range into the Douglas fir forest that borders the orchard. The clear alleys between rows of fruit trees shift into a mossy rainforest. Families of deer hide in the shadows, poised, I'm told, to leap the electric fence when night falls. The call of ripened fruit dulls their shyness.
When my daughter and her little brother were children, on early fall days like this we too walked hand in hand up a graveled road to our two-room cottage on a hillside, though that hillside overlooked the Pacific Ocean. Like today we snacked on the sweet fruits that surrounded us, our fingertips and tongues stained by blackberries. I recognize that a pattern has been set and that my sweet daughter will share such times with her children as they grow, and if I'm lucky, I'll be invited along.
Dare I Share a Peach
by Bruce Howard
In the security monitor on the wall above the front door, Michael saw the neighborhood baker holding a small white pastry box. The box and the white chef coat glowed pink from the red porch light in the wintery overcast afternoon. She handed the warm peach beehive to him, and apologized, explaining the peach had to be reconstituted from two dried halves.
"I’ll enjoy it, Thistle, thank you."
"I can’t depend on the co-ops anymore – orchardists are vanishing to survival communes. I’m sorry, but this is my last delivery, Michael, the streets are getting too dangerous. Sometimes I feel foolish to stay in town, but locking myself away in a gun-mune doesn't seem good, and I just won’t."
Michael nodded. Muggings were increasing. Walking around in only tightie-whities was safe, common practice last summer, the aura of insanity was protection from random acts of greed, and
gun-munes. Gun-munes by design were carefully planned acts of greed.
"Here, I made this for your bike." Michael gave Thistle a pinwheel of colorful hemp-paper triangles and her payment of two pints of homebrew bubble-wrapped to travel in her wire basket.
"Use this zip tie to cinch the pinwheel to your handlebar." A motion in the bushes at the side of Mrs. Chindmer’s home across the street drew his attention; a stranger was peering into her window.
"Hey, what’re you doing?"
The man turned and stared at Michael, didn’t run, didn’t wave, and worse, two young boys at his side did the same, just stared.
"Know them?"
"No."
"Ooh, not good," Thistle shook her head. "Got to go. Thanks, Michael." She attached the pinwheel, blew to make it spin, and then rode off, turning to wave and ringing her thumb bell twice.
Michael watched Thistle shrink by distance until she dis-appeared behind the garbage pile on the roundabout. He waved even though she was out of sight. Then, he heard a crash, perhaps a crash, definitely shouting, more shouting, ringing, and a scream – a woman’s scream, gunfire, and then silence.
Was that Thistle’s bell? Michael wondered, running to the house. He grabbed his rifle behind the door, ran back outside, the door slammed shut, and he stopped in confused panic. That stranger and those two boys were staring at his home, the porch light had automatically changed to green, indicating the house was vacant, available to any squatter. Michael had left the door unlocked. Conflicting demands paralyzed him: Go to Thistle; go to house. Go! No! Caution broke his bravery and left him standing, holding the rifle barrel like a walking stick.
Disappointed, he closed his eyes and bent over, resting his forehead on fist and muzzle. He noted his brain poised in the path of a bullet, and distracted himself with the idea of giving those two boys the warm peach dessert. He stood. Already halfway down the block,
the strangers were small in the distance.
On a Son Gone to College
by Guy Tauscher
I stop at your open door,
stare at the empty chair, your clear desk
Punched by the zesty smell,
my mind, stirred and swirled
of you there, hunched over,
frenetic, reading, writing,
singing to relieve the stress,
striving for success.
Now me here,
dewy eyed, misty cheeked,
body weak.
One day
I’ll have the courage to walk in,
sit at your desk,
rub my hands on the arms of the chair,
feel your essence.
Then I’ll find that smelly sock under your bed,
empty the trash filled with tissue,
and vacuum the rug.
But for now I simply close the door
and walk on by.
Rest in the Divide
by Patrick Mulvihill
I find relief in contrast.
I see, hear and feel contrast in a land where valleys rise to the spine of the earth, where rivers cut through jagged ribs of rock, and parched deserts meet Miocene rain forest.
But tug at the seams, the stitch-lines between conflicts, and the tension seems to unfurl. Peel back reality and look to the comically droopy face of Mount Hood
— you’ll see a force untouched by rivalry.
tumble forever between rock and sky,
I hear them chuckling at the silly predicament they’re in.
I try to soak in the boundaries between concrete sorrow and intangible hope.
I rest in the divide.
After Dam Decommissioning
by Katy Jablonski
I remember
resting in wooden chairs
while vain trees primp in your reflection
I remember
paddling your smooth turquoise waters
and frisky mergansers, feasting on shallow trout
I remember
anticipating the ospreys’ return each spring
and soaring eagles above Douglas fir tree tops
I remember
swinging from your steep bank
and plunging into your icy depths
I remember
seeking refuge in your silent stillness.
But one October morning
one hundred years of tranquility
shifted into magnificent motion.
We watched you drain
and take the earth with you.
We watched your layered bottom,
powerful concrete lava,
head-cut up the river, building a canyon.
Once again, trees sway eighty feet above unleashed
water
Once again, glorious torrents replace quiet pools. Once again, salmon, white with experience, spawn
in your sediment
Once again, the Yakima people dip nets at Husum
Once again, you are free.
Still
I remember you.
Despair and Hope
by Lynette Scribner
I heard you get in around midnight.
The dogs did their due diligence then scrambled back
in bed.
I dozily called out and you said, "Goodnight. I love
you, mama."
"I love you too, Tay."
Always let those be the last words you say to the ones
you love
for they may, indeed, be the last words.
I did not see the despair.
How did I miss that?
But I felt it today.
Despair when I found your body trying to die.
Despair as I held your seizing body and could only
think, "Airway. Airway. Airway."
Despair as I fumbled the phone with one hand
thinking, "911
– goddammit, that's all you have to manage."
Despair as the line rang while I repeated my address
over and
over in my head so I wouldn't forget it.
Despair at uttering the words, "Possible overdose."
And when you stopped seizing and fell silent in my
arms . . .
eternal, breath-stopping seconds of despair.
And then you took a breath . . .
And the flashing red lights arrived . . .
And this morning as I stare at you sleeping peacefully, thanking God you're still here,
the sunrise view from ICU 220
harbors hope.
Precipice
by Subhadra Katz
I want a love that loves like a verb, that has action to the other side of longing. A love that can take what's there, see through the layers and love what it sees. A love that is a lifeline to truth.
I want a love that can laugh in the middle of broken pieces. A love that knows I'm sorry, confidence to be wrong, willingness to want. A love that makes things possible instead of making excuses.
I want a love that never stops, like waves through temperature of sky and anger of clouds and shrieking of birds and small human dramas. A love that knows itself. A love that is God made flesh, human and messy.
I name what I want in order to know it. I summon the courage to take my place at the table. Can I belong here? I make eye contact and enjoy every bite. I name it as a request, "Please pass the salt," and "Thank you, I'd love dessert."
I name it to give it shape and texture. The blood, guts and bones of desire without shame. I name it to stop hiding my want, precipice of boldness.
I name it like a first argument, scary and precarious.
I name it to stop the endless loop of lies that live in my body, telling me I can't.
I name it as an act of faith, believing there is enough light for us all. I name it like a prayer, like humility and vulnerability, religion of the brave. I name it to surrender, fold my arms behind me, heart open to who I am. I name it to make peace with my past, to forgive my mistakes, to end the fight.
Memory of Love
by Rishell Graves
Coming in the door after school,
The smell of fresh baked bread
Blew over me like a gentle breeze,
And there on the kitchen counter,
The loaves my mother had
Spent hours making.
She would cut us thick slices,
And spread on the butter
We had churned that weekend.
Sweet cream, melting into the
Still warm bread.
I would close my eyes
And take a bite of love.
nto the secrets of the air.
My heart is a tree,
Branches inching into Heaven
Roots inching to Hell.
I am filled of light and water.
Last Day Together
by Jeannette Poirot
I watch you over the top of
the investigation report, creating
work, the subtle flicker of concentration you direct at stacks of paperwork on your desk, shuffling and separating one pile from itself,
your yellow sleeves brushing the folders
as we attempt to forget the other is there.
I break and fall on the diagrams of foil cocoons in my hands, the pages of sterilized words
(pants green and intact at waistband, yellow shirt visible at wrists, rest missing)
(glove left hand shrunk 50%, fusee
found under body, rest unrecoverable) which
I examine like a lump of lead, study
the details as a general prepares for war.
I remember once you came and crumpled in
a pile of elbows and knees at my feet
and slumped your shape into my lap like
a shelter,
and I a talisman, by proximity
keep you safe, your reckless battle-charm
and the fruitless risks of your past.
But the smell of smoke got into your blood
and your clothes, and
my collected and distant heart steeled-sad for everyone, and those of us still here, who have no fate yet, who don't yet know it.
As I read my mind wanders to our length of string and what exquisite happiness
and sorrow you and I are marked for.
I look up and when your eyes meet mine again
across the room,
they are filled with sadness and flames.
The Gorge Literary Journal, a joint project with The Hood River News and sponsored by the Columbia Center for the Arts, strives to give local writers an outlet for sharing their work. The next submission deadline will be May 15, for publication this August. Please follow the guidelines and submission procedure at www.gorgelit.org/ submission. Best wishes from co-editors John Metta and Julie Hatfield, and assistant editor Sarah Sullivan. Comments may be directed to editors@gorgelit.org.
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