Category Archives: Cascadian Byways

poems written in and around Cascadia, often traveling by train or ferry

Cascadian Byways

California Plateau, Eastward

Winding weary roads
high desert farms of
wind and pistachios
backtrack county roads
beleaguered edges of
parts unfeatured
by geography or films

California’s high plateau
39 degrees dry
oil wells and water machines
rest like dinosaurs
and their empty gas stations

Did you see the shows?”
he sells artish bits
stretched canvas
with stucco and shells
and shellaced print
of steal your face
they lament and encourage Chicago
and we all wish yesterday could last forever

Lead to Vegas 1AM
Sasha dog, Mexican food 114 degrees
road, desert, red rock

Home is the road. Art, crafts, highs and music.

Cascadian Byways

Inlets, Southbound

Hazy morning bound for familiar (once) inlets — Eld, Steamboat, Budd — passing tangled roads & eroded forests towards the smallest town I know to vanish for a spell.

“Do nothing Dave” — I’m not adept at this ‘nothing’ — my life is (I thought) defined by creating & giving.

Generativity is the word I was told by the lady who advised me to float until the current of the story can carry me along once more.

I’ll sew notebooks and walk the old tracks seeking to clear the fog which captured me — for a spell.

I am stronger if I can learn to stop trying so hard. My meditations are full of places I yearn to go by steamship, unforgotten pals due a visit, stories to actually type or say aloud. Projects & projections. This isn’t peace but this monk ain’t going to heaven — or Tibet for that matter.

This painting is: Gravelly Beach, Madrona circa 2005 9″x11″ oil paint and dirt on unstretched (cheap) canvas — feels like re-emerging somehow.

When my bones and bits of soul tell me I’m ready. One day do I wake up aware and brisk? Or does this Dave spend quiet labour editing and contextualizing previous Dave?

To survive, I adapt and surrender hard won vices & leisures.

Sorry, but I’m not sorry for all the decadence I do not share with you now. I’m not able. May we renew and replenish in the future despite I’ve always lived for each fresh dawn to create, share, love, hug, inspire. May I?

I’ll wear a hat so you’ll recognize me as I’ve shaken off erstwhile disguises.

Cascadian Byways

Comfortably Lonely, Cabin Porch

Comfortably lonely, cabin porch
hard back book
foggy overslept hard back chair

backpack hangs on
a wooden peg
empty
but for deja vu

trembling hands
loosening clothes
fingers slipping
underside the clasp

coarse canvas dream
and well oiled leather boots
with high arches
moving away from here

even before painting
the rooms onto a circus tent
the tall poles cantilevered
and kids with summer suntan lines
on open feet

saguaro sunset scenery
flash by in a clackety-thwack 16mm print
Grandpa coughing, me
jotting down unessentials,
collecting pottery along the way

the movement is key i recollect
while stopping still and
tucking my boots
under a hearty mantle
of foreboding calm

Cascadian Byways

One Way These Tracks

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One way these tracks
run directly into the elevator
then somehow into Mt. Hood

turning east
stopped by a wooden fence
with a dam behind
Columbia daunted
but roiling

stunted but strong yet
regressed to measures, velocity
and potential
the water spreads thinner then gold
every fiefdom wants its piece to bridge,
tame and dam

rocks and measurements
observe the folly
silt builds behind
water cools ahead
moving
beyond memories
of what wasn’t left behind
of drowned villages
and artifacts uncovered
entombed and enshrined
only the tugboats come close

barge drifting
silos wait
trains slip past
Columbia slows

Cascadian Byways

Sky-blue Trepidation

Sky blue trepidation
low as bricks
soft as flakes

My brother called
something about
quitting jobs
remembering jobs
remembering summertimes
building log houses
muggy days
broke by coral seas
sanddunes stretch
past the yellow cedars
jump again into sento
soaking hot
feeling low
straggling past
the circumstance