Thank you.
I'd like to say that I'm flabbergasted
that so many people are here.
And I'm afraid that I won't be able to come
near the introduction that I've had but thank you very much.
I'd like to read some poems first tonight from my chapbook
that Peter Paraschi mentioned to you, Willamette.
And hope that I overcome some of my nervousness that way.
Title poem.
Willamette is the name of a river in Oregon.
And I sort of grew up along it.
At roughly translated it means river of many waters.
"Willamette."
My life has always been here in the water.
Home can never be in dry places for I have grown
in the colors of dusk and fog.
River nights own me like Indian parents,
and when the water is clear in season
I've seen what it keeps to itself.
Blackberries have mixed my blood with their own
and the river stones have asked me
to come with them after July trout with the river's
legitimate son.
Brush never cut you, John, Indian or not,
who didn't have to think about it and you knew all the water.
But there was a day we waited too deep,
the dogs swept away and left us swimming
one handed with our gear through reddening beet cannery water.
On the island bar we caught a pair
of big flathead chubs and a cutthroat you
said was a spawner, sea run and going for home so we let it go.
The chubbs clapped on hot stones for buzzards.
We crossed back at a better place went
to our belts and beet juice water,
rocks under our canvas shoes were slicked
with cannery garbage and we could see downstream the heads
of our dogs working the level water coming
and coming up the bleeding river.