Note: Pat Cason's name was mistakenly misspelled in our print edition. Her name is spelled correctly here. We regret the error.
Hood River poet Pat Cason submitted two poems for this month’s “Creativity in the Gorge” page and writes, “I hope to offer poems to appeal to people who think they hate poetry. These are brief, epistolary poems I wrote for a yearly ‘Poetry Postcard Fest.’ Written daily and spontaneously, largely without editing, they offer one moment, a specific time and place.” Both were written Aug. 28. — Trisha Walker, managing editor
QUESTION
Already the glassy sky
breathes a chill down
our necks
every ever-darkening
morning
and we all know what’s
coming—
the descent from light,
the way our bodies believe
they’re bears, and need to
cave up.
But how else to deserve or
to pay
for the extravagance of
August
if not by surviving winter,
our dreams
filled with golden dust
we’ve gathered
from each day of summer,
each day
a sunflower we visit,
collecting pollen;
or filled with how the
hummingbird
vibrates in place just now,
to probe honeysuckle
for nectar?
LAST NIGHT
Last night I heard the quail
calling, like little roosters’ cadences
and when I woke at three
it seemed they’d summoned
the moon’s luminous smile,
tilted to balance on one
sickle-end;
some planets, content to
be near it; and the
patient stars
dialing slowly toward
morning like
dutiful courtesans.
Only the crickets
protested—although without
much effort,
as though they knew they’d been upstaged all night.
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