For Mark Anderson, mon amour.

I never heard that much about them but now I know a whole lot more. Tiny houses. That’s another thing, entirely, appearing larger than our apartment pressing against the butte, just down a ways from the columns and across from the train if you could go directly but now there’s that fence and it is impossible to just make your sweet way.

                                                                                               Straight to the station.
 
The shifting sands hold huckleberries and fat salal. Their forests, their lakes are connected by rolling sky, and we hear the surf sounding so much larger than what we thought.

                                                                                               At the museum.

Is that a bowling ball? Found at the base of Sweetwater Falls.  Who knows how long it was rolling around under the spray until it became perfect. See, someone took it and brought it here. Royal and Fox sure knew how to make typewriters. Apple head dolls under glass. Florence’s original switchboard. There’s the operator’s chair, her small seat. This is an original painting. These were the first pioneers. Too much sand for a cannery.

                                                                                                More a matter of digging in.

Susan Kay Anderson is the author of Mezzanine (Finishing Line Press, 2019). Highlights: 2010 National Poetry Series Finalist and poetry editor of Big Talk in Eugene, Oregon, a free publication in the early 1980s which showcased up-and-coming NW punk bands. She earned degrees in anthropology from the University of Oregon (BS), English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Colorado, Boulder (MA & Jovanovich Award), and Eastern Oregon University (MFA). Her recent work can be found in the following: Beat Scene, BlazeVox Journal, Concis, Caliban Online, Guernica, Mojave River Review, Oregon East, Prairie Schooner, Tom Clark Beyond The Pale; and her poem, “Propolis (Before The City)” is forthcoming in Silver Needle Press journal. She blogs at Hawaii Teacher Detective.