It Takes Awhile

A poem about Whychus Creek near Sisters, Oregon

Dipper harvests moss along swollen crashing water log jam and a clash of water where

Steelhead used to leap it’s said until water was pulled off and Whychus Creek ran dry

Creek starts up high in the sisters mountains near brokentop, clouds hang along the ridges early this morning, the water rumbling past and the

Way things change fast and slow remind me of dry ground ruined by row crops I passed day before to a grove of the biggest cottonwoods I’ve ever seen just coming almost out of nowhere and things take

Patience because the way experience unfolds is often worse for a long time before it gets better, like the dips and bend in any trail

And I know that I write too much about nature try and use it to describe relationship—or as a borrowed sketchpad

Which actually is just a use of it rather than a confluence with it but the fact is the flowage is always happening it never stops and it never began

So to live is an expression of relationship even if it’s not seen or known or talked about and

I have to remember the dipper I saw this morning harvesting moss from rocks under the snowmelt pumped falls

In the rushing water he clambered on the boulders without knowing what fear of the 30 foot deluge was that would carry him and all his history to the bottom of the pool below the bright white roiling water of the creek

And I have to remember it takes time to build a nest, and the gentleness he scaled the slick rocks with for another mouthful of moss

And his dipping and quick movement across the pools into the rushing water and back again—so much ease and simplicity for him and

I have to remember these things and such ideas like how the Whychus once ran dry was forgotten as a river and now its got steelheads again and

Students in Sisters writing about it, making art and I have to remember a sign I saw out in a barren place full of sharp volcanic rock and delicate wildflowers that said:

"Just looking is boring, but
when you start walking you get a really special feeling.
I don't know why, you just do."
- Jonathan, 3rd grade