Divorce Rate in the Northwest

 

What these mountains had to give

we’ve turned into crates for overseas

No wonder we keep missing each other

cry words, words and choose dust

or nails for breakfast

 

What these mountains had to give

we’ve subdivided into wide closets

and no basements

The dog chained in back bites the hand

while we talk of children in Pakistan

 

What these mountains had to give

chokes up streams and clogs the sloughs

Where will our dreams now spawn?

No return on that stock, try as we might

Sea gulls always find the scent

 

What these mountains had to give

is lost somewhere under the dam

That beautiful girl I once knew

Celilo—angels leaping round her—

no money no silver or green like hers

 

What these mountains had to give

comes roaring back in a tsunami of splinters

We run to dissemble in sawmills

fight over blood incinerating

and wonder why the evening sky turns purple

 

 

For thousands of years Celilo Falls was a meeting ground on the Columbia River. People gathered every fall to fish for salmon leaping up those cascading waters. Now it is Lake Celilo, behind The Dalles Dam.