OK, one more poem then on to the rest.
This is called "Sather."
Sather is a very common Norwegian name.
And maybe I'd better say that as I found out,
and as this poem tries to make clear, but it may not.
Its ultimate derivation is from another Norwegian word, which
means a mountain passenger.
OK.
"Old Norwegian by me on the bus.
Travel makes you big.
Night ride through Redding, Red Bluff, north.
Those forests on Snoqualmie Pass just like the streams and woods
where I grew up, an island in the North Atlantic.
And Everett at age 19, a sailor on a schooner, 1912.
Those loftiest mountains, how things change.
I used to like this country.
Now I think I'll live in France.
All my kids grown up.
Was a fireman on a coaler, A logger
full of snoose, a dried-out Scandinavian fisherman's son
gone off to the Northwest.
Name is Sather.
Means mountain summer pasture, like they have in Norway.
It's a common name, where we take our time.
And up Queets Basin country, that year, 1964,
was still in August, 10 feet on the snow."