Scot Siegel is an urban planner and poet from Oregon. He serves on the board of trustees of the Friends of William Stafford. His books include Some Weather (Plain View Press, 2008), Untitled Country (Pudding House Publications, 2009), and SKELETON SAYS (Finishing Line Press, 2010). Salmon Poetry has accepted his second full-length collection, which will be out in early 2012. Siegel edits the online poetry journal Untitled Country Review. The following four poems appear here with his permission.

WHEN THE BARN DANCE BEGAN

                    Under aluminum lamp-swing
                    the beginning and the end of
                    the early suffering began . . .

                     – inscribed on the back of an abandoned barn

Nearly evening. No friend
arranged a meeting. No rumor
No letter passed hand-to-hand––

Behind the grandstand, sweet
riffs off the San Joaquin Valley––
Oat grass, reeds and a young

Latina dances in a wind skirt
on the moon-swept pond…

                    *

Alone again with my thoughts
I lean against the split-rail fence
of my childhood in California––

Night air rippling off the Sierras,
wagon ruts meandering somewhere––
and Lyra’s constellation reemerges…

                    *

A sacred code was broken that night
I cannot explain. But she brought forth
everything I’d ever wanted

and that one thing, free
yet inescapable, still a part of me,
I would always need

[First published in The Enigmatist, and appears in SKELETON SAYS.]
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INSPECTING GRANDPA’S GUN

I retrieve it from a dry, dark place
Pull it from a sleeve, some felt-like leather
With our name inscribed on a flimsy tag
I examine it for any trace of him –

This was a gift to my father from his true father
The one with spaniels and a hunting lodge
Not the one we could not speak of –
I take up the heft of it, and get the sense

I am looking down the long barrel of some
unknown history . . . He always told me:
Safety-on, until you’re absolutely ready
Watch your stance; hold steady.

I scan the room: No window. No door.
Just the gun like an iron dove in my hand. With love
I turn it over, brush my fingers over the stock
Find his initials in smooth silver ridges –

I turn it over again. And drink from a spring called
The pooling of history – A chalice of blood,
The Ukrainian forest at dusk; – I have his chin
When I lift & pump the muzzle; his shoulder

When I place it in the crook; his eyes
Pressing cold metal to my face; – then his voice
When something faint & terrible, in the shape of
my real name, burns through the cheek piece –

[Appears in Some Weather]
–


VISITING THE MASONS’ GRAND LODGE IN FOREST GROVE

The glass is half-empty. The night fills it with sighs
We came for a good time, my wife and I––
Kids at summer camp––Even after twenty years,
Some things we still do on a whim…

It’s late. Packing now. Didn’t even stay the night.
The lodge and its rooms are dingy & warn
With the pall of those who lived and died here.
(A siren wails from the highway below)

Ten years ago the last resident left in protest;
The Grand is boutique hotel now. Micro beers and
A movie house. Tourists and young executives
Drink without a designated driver. Play truth or dare.
Watch foreign films, or screw, for a change…

Our room is hot and it smells like the old, my wife says
Though I think hospital… Poor Farm… Asylum…
I wonder how many died right here in this room
Where the walls feel dank. The sash window sticks

And the radiator sits silent as a minister
No hiss. No spit… Idle as a visitor slouched
in the corner, when I turn and close the door
behind us

[Appears in Untitled Country]
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WHEN YOU BRING MY MEDS

I am strung out at the end of Ward 3 in the midst
of a dream, flying over Havens Elementary

I am no longer old. My bones so light the sun
lifts me from the balcony of my decrepit body

And releases me into the atmosphere of your white frock
And I am grateful. For I have died

Five times already, since my wife’s elongated
stop––her slow surrender to Alzheimer’s––

And my daughters’ inevitable leaving, when they shed
my name like snakes shed skin in early morning sun

For men who take one look at me and see only an old
man: No inheritance. No plan. Only the slow drip,

Drip, drip… to keep him company. The piped-in oxygen,
cigarette grip on the channel changer––

This day is a gift, really. When you come, the round gears
of the sun and trees outmuscle the blinds, and release me

The sky and swifts make love again. And my disease
subsides, docile as a sweet little lapdog––

I am so lucky to have you here with me, listening; holding
my hand as if it were a living thing. Saying nothing

And everything I ever needed. Your eyes guiding me safely
over the tarmac of what my healers call

my advanced dementia

[First published in The Centrifugal Eye, November, 2009: “Battling Stereotypes” and appears in SKELETON SAYS.]

Watch Siegel reading this poem.

Oregon poet, Mark Thalman, helps us springboard into new guest writer features with four poems from Catching the Limit (© 2009, Bedbug Press – Fairweather Books), part of the Northwest Poetry Series. Thalman received his MFA from the University of Oregon, and has been teaching English in the public schools for 28 years. He’s also been a board member of the Portland Poetry Festival, a Poet-in-the-Schools for the Oregon Arts Foundation, and an Assistant Editor for the Northwest Review. His work has appeared in Carolina Quarterly, CutBank, Many Mountains Moving, Pedestal Magazine, and Verse Daily, among others. The following poems appear with his permission.

EASTERN OREGON

Out here is miles from anywhere.
Coyotes, cattle, and sun become your companions.

Hills roll and fold, a sea of giant swells,
then flatten out, lay calm, in bleaching summer heat.

When evening unveils its stars,
life shrinks under the universe.

For centuries, Nez Perce came to trade for Columbia salmon,
then Pioneers snaked wagons down the Blue Mountains.

Even today, dust devils coil up,
and rivers cut deep gorges.

Sage grows low so wind can go where it wants–
whistling through wire fences.

[Previously published in Writers' Dojo]

AT THE CABIN: ODELL LAKE

Not having talked to anyone in a week,
I keep my voice in shape
by standing on the swing,
knees pumping, arms flexing ropes–
making the board go
back and forth,
higher and higher,
until I´ve got enough momentum
and become the metronome.

If I am off key or forget a lyric,
there is no one to hear it.
On a slight breeze, I sing to my favorite trees,
chipmunks scampering the wood pile,
the shy rabbit by the lake. I sing
through soft filtered light–
a couple of Elvis, a bunch of Beatles,
followed by some soul,
and a medley of rock n´ roll.

Firs, having stood for hundreds of years,
absorb my voice. When I stop
not much has changed.
The world is a little older, the planet
a little further through space.

[Previously published in Pedestal Magazine]

HIGHWAY TO THE COAST

Thick and green, the hills rise
on each other’s shoulders.
High ridges disappear in fog
make me wish I was born of water.

At the divide, I taste the cool ocean air,
the way a deer finds a salt lick,

and roller coaster down a narrow road
that does not believe in a straight line.

Blackberry vines
crawl through barbed wire fences.

Small towns occur like a whim.
As if in a coma, they merely survive.

I tune in the only station
and listen to country western.

Static gradually drowns the singer out.
Rounding a corner, he pops to the surface

for another breath,
simply to sink back still singing.

Fir shadows lace the road.
Bracken cascades embankments.

At the next curve, a farmhouse is half finished–
boards weathered raw. Chickens roost in a gutted Chevy.

Scattered among these hills, families
rely on small private lumber mills,

the disability or unemployment check,
the killing of an out of season elk.

[First appeared in Caffeine Destiny]

NORTH UMPQUA, SUMMER RUN

Wading thigh-deep,
I cast a fly
which I tied last winter,
and let it drift
below the riffle.

There, a steelhead lies,
weighing the current,
balancing in one place,
the mouth slowly working
open and closed.

While eyes that have never known sleep
signal the body to rise,
slide steadily forward,
shadow flickering
over mossy stones.

In a smooth flash of motion,
deft as a blade, the fish strikes
and the surface explodes.

Trembling violently in air,
amid spray and foam,
the steelhead blazes like a mirror catching sun,
falls back, extinguishing the fire,
only to lift again,
a flame out of water.

In a long meteoric arc,
cutting a vee across the surface,
the fish unable to dislodge the hook,
dashes instinctively down stream.

Zigzagging back and forth,
fight the current and line,
it is only a matter of time,
until this miracle of energy
rests on its side,
gills flaring.

She’s fat with roe,
so I work the barb out
and let her go
on her journey
from which
there is no escape.

[Previously published by Gin Bender Poetry Review; later appeared in Deer Drink the Moon: Poems of Oregon, Ooligan Press, Portland State University)

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Thalman will be part of a panel discussion on Oregon poetry during the upcoming Summer Solstice Poetry Weekend, coordinated by Eleanor Berry. The discussion takes place on Saturday, June 26th, from 1:30 – 3:30 in the Stayton Public Library meeting room in Stayton, Oregon. On Sunday the 27th, from 3-5 p.m., Thalman will be among the events featured readers at the Stayton Friends of the Library Used Bookstore.

Read another of Thalman’s poems here.

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