Seek ye sounds and hear the collective bugle calls!
O’ osprey n’ lumbering locomotive bawls
Hear its honking trombone plunger muted feature
Garbled warble like the voice of Charlie Brown’s teacher
Come down to the river! Bathe in its charming drawl!
The shoreline beckons, a welcoming stretch
To: down and outs, junkies, unhoused, and sketch
Stern ships and steam paddles once thundered aweigh
T’was trolleys n’ hoglines before the salmon swam away
I imagine them buoyed upon anticipation and swells
Pushing past, picturesque placid particulated shells
Gliding delicately o’er past century fast moving tides
Their fishing nets once bulging from the men’s pride
Sand sprawls underneath as I balance stones atop cairns
Glinting sunshine daps the surface, practicing my zen
I tiptoe by tangled plastic bags, needles, and appliance insides
Amid the whir from E-bikes, bicycles and sweaty joggers’ thighs
My heart beats alive in this cool water and bore produced song!
I love you, sweet Willamette! Oh joy to you in my bikini and thong!
Basking in your mien, laying rocks on one another
Despite the Melancholy Accident going on o’er yonder
Please see this week’s earthweal weekly challenge
The Tigress Awakens 
I LOVE the photos of the cairns. So wonderful. Your river sounds very busy, full of noise and activity. You took me there. Wow, you completed the Appalachian Trail. That is awesome.
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Thanks Sherry!! I am happy I could bring you to my local river hangout
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Sacred and profane merge in these waters, pure and doomed. That the river sings at all is the miracle here, despite (and weirdly) because our human infestations have hammered its courses so. (Stacking stones is a response between those, I think.) A powerful angry beloved energy here. I so remember the Willamette visiting my brother in Portland a few years before he died. Glittery, huge, cold, a Pacific augment I so little understood and distantly grieve. Heavens, who are we without the salmon?
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I am happy you have fond memories of the Willamette. I do hear (the violent splash) and see the occasional osprey grab a salmon from the river on occasion but not like before. Sigh. Sad to hear about your brother. And sad that these sacred rivers are running dry and empty.
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A joyful dance. (K)
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Quite a balancing act
of both word and rock
The past glimpsed
as from behind a curtain
the present in a state
of toxic shock
with a future uncertain
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I like the stillness of the stone arrangements in between the detritus and your love letter to the river. Fine writing.
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Much obliged ; )
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