In loving memory of Zachary Warnock
I don’t live here in this place of pine and birch
where every direction you turn
faces one river or another. This window shows me
how streets curl in line with the Willamette,
currents of cars and people like floods
of normality and routine. These are details I might
not perceive from any other window.
Questions surface from Interstate 5 like water
molecules building cirrus clouds. How
do we go about getting on with our lives?
A nurse calls my son’s name and I turn
his wheelchair from the window.
I recall the river’s shimmering surface
in the distance. I let that image
guide us through a hall not unlike
the Columbia’s passage toward setting sun.