Susan Kay Anderson
Always Eugene
The air runs off the river. All spaces
have given in to dreaming
shadows between here and the cedar
lengthening my love for Eugene. This is how
it always begins with me and Eugene.
When I begin observing the trees again.
Always Eugene running around.
Expecting every moment a change.
My sentences are incomplete. What else
This early. Eugene in another heyday.
Same daffodils and hyacinths scratching
The air river willow even far from it.
At home in the library. Others also
Resting their eyes. That’s why the carpet
All so quiet. Not even phones ringing.
This way it is the day of the memorial
Every day cycle. Heads bowed. Then
I say no to the salmon dinner. It is
Already too dark for driving but that
Is what we do leaving them behind.
The story should have been more about the landscape.
If I could criticize just for a moment I would say ugly chairs
Yet I would have them in a minute in a second and recover
The material
A fine swirl, a madcap idea, something exotic burlap
Velvety horsehair
Recycled later as a shirt.
Once a hurricane has landed, there is really no going back
To before and how before was different
Everything
In place in that place. Even the water
Extra potent
Extra watery.
I was walking to and from my life.
The rain pitter patter all that space
Between the drops onion soup.
Thought it was another corner
To go around and instead went right through
Saw a different angle saw you as an angel
Talking me down from the edge
But I never knew I was quite on it
To begin with. I’ll tell you my dream.
It is of my house. A house of trees
Fantastic leaves. They could be needles.
Actually I would prefer pine or cedar.
Cozy. Something branchy. Moving.
I am lucky. True as weather. Say it.
See how they were waiting and waiting
for something to show up in the mail
a turn at the big wheel so to speak
out of their league mostly true
but it was fun while it lasted.
If this poem could be anything
It would be spirit attempts
With feathers and time crossing
Ocean grabbing all light
Mixing it a little and so forth.
At least they weren’t endlessly
Sitting in cars and doing just
About the same although leaving
The motor running is what trucks
Do when busy with deliveries.
—Submitted on 01/31/2021
Susan Kay Anderson is the author of Mezzanine (Finishing Line Press, 2019) and Please Plant This Book Coast To Coast (forthcoming, Finishing Line Press), a biographical memoir of Virginia Brautigan Aste. Her poems, essays, stories, and interviews have appeared in Anti-Heroin Chic, Guernica, Mudfish, Prairie Schooner, Puerto del Sol, and other journals. Anderson holds in MFA from Eastern Oregon University. She lives in Eugene, Ore.
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Editor’s Note: The series title A River Sings is borrowed from “On the Pulse of Morning,” the poem read by Maya Angelou at the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993.
