Hometown Poetry

Here's a couple of poems that I wrote about my little Northwestern home. They're certainly not my best work, but a fun tribute to place. The first is a love poem of sorts to the town and my memories of it, written sometime in high school. The second is basically a reworking of the first, sharing many of the same images and themes. It is a bit more pensive and serious, though, and was written in a college english class.

I'd love to see any other creative works that locals have written, too! Post them in the comments...

METALINE FALLS

Rest stop for those passing through,
Blink and you'll miss it.
Home for the dilapidated cement plant
With its silos as a tombstone marking its grave.
Town of silence in winter;
And lazy breeze in summer:

I have seen your every face, worn your every attitude:
tedium, elation, awe.
I am a part of you, as you part of me; lifelong friends thus far.
I though you so mysterious when I was young and confined
to home, but as I ventured to mainstreet with my mother,
my world grew, as did you.
You were a large town then, but never intimidating.
Your winter: Deck the Falls, sledding, hot chocolate, cold
breath in my nose, a boy on his back in the snow staring
at the clouds.
Your summer: Affair on Mainstreet, biking, swimming,
lemonade, sunshine setting imagination free.
As I entered middle childhood I was even more caught up in
your mystery, wondering at the mountains which surround
you.
Your people are good and I began to memorize their names
and recognize their smiles and faces.

I even knew the dogs by name.

One summer day I sat in a chair outside the cafe, eating my
ice cream bar and pondering life, and your mysteries,
which now seemed more familiar to me.
I was comfortable there in the sun,
thinking,
wondering,
pining,
smiling,
floating, floating, free.
A generation apart from the industrial boom that created you.
Yet your trees and mountains are the same, only older, as are
your buildings, many of which are now ghosts: the school
building now a theatre and library, the cement plant, the
gas stations, the hotel on lower mainstreet.

But the people remain lively.
They are good and I know their smiles, faces and names:
the houses they live in.
I have grown older now, but sometimes I still wonder.
You and I have spent many a lazy day together,
Ore stripe cascade,
Metaline Falls.

I know your secrets,
And you know mine.

SEARCHING FOR METALINE FALLS

The run-down cement plant is like a failed socialist dream.
The mines closed years ago. Dark shafts
fill with river water. Now the old train runs for tourists.
Roofs cave under weight of northern snow.
It falls less now. The imposing shoulder of Mt. Linton
that has haunted my dreams, hidden and Tibetan.
Sometimes behind storm clouds. Or heavy and black
when the sun slips toward Seattle. Washington Rock looms
nearer. Its huge face is neither stately nor presidential.
Is granite and limestone and streaked
black like tar when rain chisels at it. And streams
precipitously into the Pend Oreille. You can see the whole town
from atop. All square mile of it. A man fell drunk
from there one night and miraculously survived.

All of the buildings are agnostic, whether church
or tavern. The followers of each are the same.
The same people on mainstreet,
exchanging greetings at the post office,
buying Coors Light at the Falls Market, where carts
holy roll themselves down undulating uneven aisles.

And there is the Cutter Theatre. Where loggers and shopkeepers
come alive: Shakespearean, Oklahoma!, cookies and punch
and gossip at intermission. It used to be the old school building
before the district was consolidated. In the basement black and white
photos of old graduates stare mutely, unknown. Some names match
cemetery stones. We watch movies at the old Clark Fork Theater
settled into darkness where ceiling tiles threaten to fall
from overhead.

The survivors of small town America are god-like.
Everyone knows everyone. Even the names of dogs.
Once a year, tragedy: a flock of crows descending, strokes,
car crashes and suicides. Life is survival.
I never needed to memorize the street names
because I never really leave. Despite the one entrance into town
across a tall steel bridge that spans
the mighty green Pend Oreille, visitors still get lost. As do I.