Since so many friends want to know (I'm including my imaginary friends here), I'll report on the Portland poetry reading of Wednesday night.

Elizabeth Archers and I were asked to read at Northwest Library. I was expecting a steel building 5 or 6 stories high, but it was a wee stucco building that had once been a cafe, perfect for 30 people on a cold night in late October, with gold leaf trees spangled with gold lights up and down NW 23rd Street at gold dusk.

You think I digress, but you might want to remember that image as we move along.

Elizabeth and I had been writing similar poems for years. She has a poem called "Astoria," and I have one called "Pacific," which is about Astoria. She has a poem called "God's Name" and I have one called "Yes," concerning the name of God:

Yes

A flying squirrel only falls slowly...
The sun is a star, but not all stars are suns.
Waves move in light. Grass grows down.
All those names of things we had been given
were not true, not true, but somehow yes.
We don't know what, but maybe
there is a name somewhere.

But Elizabeth and I only found out about each other because of this reading. Barbara LaMorticella, the woman with the poetic name, queen of poetry gatherings in Portland, had invited us to read at the library, after having us appear separately on her KBOO-Portland poetry radio show a few months ago.

When Elizabeth and I decided to meet up a few weeks ago, she and I came up with a handful of reasons we write about similar things in similar ways. Our fathers were military officers and we were moved here and there, giving us a nomadic childhood. She and I both lived first in Seattle, then Astoria, now Portland. We are of similar vintage. We like the same poets.

Elizabeth read first, dedicating "Astoria" to the other poet reading that night. She finished with "God's Name," which I think is a prize-winner:

God's Name

A billion and a half beats spent finding the meaning
then it's ended. Some get the assignment early.
The body can't tell the difference
between a lion in the road
and the thought that a lover might leave you.
Either way, terror arrives without a passport.
The driver shrieks at her cellphone,
the car bumps over a curb; it's done
and you are past caring.
Or the elephant sits on your chest
without permission mid-sentence,
someone calls your name and you depart
leaving gravity behind, falling or flying fast
toward love freed from its absence.

Then I read. One poem, a hopeful one written only a few days before 9/11/01, now seemed tragic for its optimism. It was titled -- later, of course -- "Beginning of a long-distance affair that couldn't last." I moved on to poems out of my chapbook "Barn Swallow."

Then I decided to read (for the first time at a reading) seven or eight miniature poems out of a work in progress, tentatively titled "Big Rock Creek: Camera poems." I mentioned that for a long time now, my Chicago friend Mark Petri has been sending me striking photographs, often from a nature refuge called Big Rock Creek near his home. The best of these photographs are like Ansel Adams photographing the woods in color. The photographs come once a day or so for a few weeks, then rest for a while, then return with the same frequency. When I see one that strikes me, I often send back a small poem within a few minutes (to make sure I don't dwell too long on the sense of the words). Here are a few in their entirety:

Help me
gather all
we have
scattered
around a
wood: three
river forks,
two trail forks,
one misplaced
fork from
abandoned
campsite,
check. We
never know why
we might need
everything
that helped us
once.

---

Dear trees,
please leave
a little this
afternoon, don't
fade so
gold you drop all
knowledge.
Remember in March
you thought every
small warm tic
of the wind
was a promise,
not an aching
song of a child's
too-far-gone
call through
bare woods.

---

If I walk any farther I swear I will step off
this known gray world and freefall
through to where all distance is a mirror,
all time is not a question
any more, that's old history,
and everything in space is rushing forward
to hug me.

As things go, the published poems in "Barn Swallow" were hardly mentioned afterwards. What caught people's attention were the small poems about the woods. Almost everyone said something to me about the way they were arrested by the small words. They said they wanted to see the photographs that inspired them. This means Mark and I will need to step up our efforts to publish these poems with the photographs.

And the gold leaf trees with the gold lights in them at gold dusk? I mentioned during the reading that there are some things I can't write a poem about, and that was one image I would just have to keep visually.

But I may drive down NW 23rd Street this evening to take photographs.