Douglas Spangle

Goodbye Nooksack

Goodbye Nooksack;
the clouds
are leaking down the valley
from the unseen Twin Sisters
off toward the Bay.

A bluejay shrieks,
a raven croaks,
a woodpecker taps
a snag somewhere.
There are distant engines.

A tiny kinglet
peeps, hops, hides
from leaf to log,
flits almost to my feet.

A wasp surveys
the punkish wood of a trunk.
The spider waits
in her sticky web.

The logging roads crawled,
the trucking lines,
then came the Dutch Reform village
with its gift mall
and dry windmill.

An interstate,
eight lanes of traffic,
will come in five years,
maybe ten.

Here’s bamboo for long life
south of Vancouver,
goodbye Nooksack
until then.

Douglas Spangle has written poetry since sometime in the 60s, and after a life overseas and in many parts of this country, has lived in Portland since 1978. He is the author of eight chapbooks, has published translations of several poets from German, and has published hundreds of poems, graphic poems, essays and reviews over several decades. His full-length book A White Concrete Day, Poems 1978-2013 was released in 2013 by GOBQ/Reprobate Books. In 2016, he was given the Stewart H. Holbrook Award for Literary Legacy. He is listed in The International Who’s Who of Poetry, but is an unapologetic longtime resident of Southeast Portland, and currently helps copy edit Street Roots.