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Sample Poems by Penelope Scambly Schott
Driving to Dufur
So you take I-84 east out of Portland
where it follows the wide Columbia out through the Gorge
to a landscape of waterfalls and steep basalt cliffs,
past Cascade Locks where the river carved through the mountains,
and if it’s raining anywhere, it’s also raining here,
if the road is icy anywhere, it’s certainly icy here,
and then you watch for the triangle of Wind Mountain,
and the high meadows of Dog Mountain,
and you picture those expanses of yellow balsamroot
broken only by orange paintbrush and lavender-blue columbine,
until you remember it’s still winter and still raining
both here and back in Portland where it will go on raining
until the fifth of July,
so you keep driving east until the sky
shows patches of blue,
and by the time you have passed Hood River
the blue patches get larger
and the hills on one side of the river
have started drying out and then on both sides,
and when you pass that railroad tunnel right before Mosier
where you cross the line into Wasco County,
you are grinning
like a kid on the first morning of summer vacation,
and by the time you get to The Dalles
the sky is entirely blue,
and you catch yourself humming,
and at exit 87 you turn south onto route 197,
heading up Auction hill where the road becomes two lanes
briefly,
but just as you are starting to speed you remember
that one time you got stopped by the sheriff
and had to go to traffic school
where the instructor told you how to avoid the cops,
so you slow down
between cherry orchards and wheat fields
to exactly eight miles over the speed limit,
passing the sign that says
Leaving the National Scenic Area
where, immediately after the sign,
the hills get even more beautiful
as you pass Five Mile and Eight Mile
and the turn-off to Rice,
a town which no longer exists,
and you pass the turn-off to Boyd,
which barely exists,
until you see a square of trees ahead
which will be Dufur cemeterywhere you own a plot between two sets of friends,
one couple buried and the other busily alive,
and your plot has a full view of Mount Hood
even though when you finally reside there
you’ll be under the ground,
but you still like the view
so maybe you should put a bench there,
but today you don’t stop,
and in less than a mile you veer slightly right
to come down into Dufur on Court Street,
remembering to slow to 25 mph
as you pass the field of retired combines
resting like ancient beasts
and the ranger station,
and then, if the new yellow caution sign is flashing
because school is in session, you slow down to 20,
until just before the school but after the Grace Church,
which looks like an old western storefront,
here’s this little lavender house with a light green roof
and a white screen door with curlicues,
and the sign by the door reads WELCOME,
but you already know that you are so welcome,
more welcome
than you have ever felt in all your whole long life,
and you can forgive everyone who ever did you wrong
whether by ill-will or accident,
because you know that the chairs and the desk
and the bed with the high headboard and its garland
of raised and painted flowers,
the coffee pot and your books,
your grandmother’s pedestal bowl,
the bathtub asleep on its four clawed feet,
and the white curtains tied back with ribbons
are all like you left them, just like you like them,
just like the house has been calling for you.
Here’s the key warm in your hand.
Trying to Show You
Up here the horizon makes a circle
with bumps for the mountains.
From Dufur Hill I can see my house,
two states, and parts of seven counties.
These high wheat fields are golden
even if it’s a cliché to say so.
I could use ochre or yellow madder
but really the wheat is intensely golden
and while I’m giving you color words
a red combine comes carving a pattern
through the high ripe wheat,
its red a red between brick and maroon.
Now the combine is headed right at me.
I want to snap a photo with my phone
but the sunlight is so damn brilliant
that I can’t see which symbol to press.
That’s why I have to write this down.
You, reader, aren’t up here with me
so no use shouting Look at this.
I wish I could show it to my dead father
but what good in wishing? Look, I’d say,
how wheat dust rises to float and settle
over headless stubble. Here’s my plan:
to share this town with everyone I love.
Calling the Meeting to Order
Here they all are, assembled around me:
Mount Adams to the north,
Mount Saint Helens with the blown-off top,
our local Mount Hood,
and, peeking up in the south, the pointy tips
of Mount Jefferson,
each peak bright with snow.
Hear ye, oh mighty mountains.
Why do I convene you thus?
Because our town needs you
for greening slopes of winter wheat,
for heifers and calves grazing in stubble,
for the snow that melts into Fifteen Mile Creek,
for knowing our way home.
Welcome, tall friends, to our meeting.
Let us proceed with the beautiful minutes.
Frequently Asked Questions after a Poetry Reading
Where do you find ideas for poems?
What time of the day do you write?
Poems are easier to find if you get up early.
Me, I hunt for poems on top of Dufur Hill.
I start by tying my sneakers with double knots
before the dog and I head out for our walk.
It’s like a quarter of a mile to the cattle gate
where I’m always careful to re-latch the chain.
Then we climb. Often I bend down to sniff.
My wise dog has taught me so much.
A bush that looks like but isn’t sagebrush
tastes vaguely of licorice or maybe lemon.
Some days poems pile up like tumbleweed
but other times I have to wait a little longer.
The real trick is to sneak up on a poem.
I sit on my same rock counting mountains
as if I didn’t care about words. After awhile
the dog lies down in the shade of my knees
and I look west toward the forest or east
toward the plains or beyond the Columbia
or south for the small tip of Mount Jefferson
where it pokes over the line of Tygh ridge,
until the world is in place. And then, bingo!
I hear my voice speaking a poem out loud.
The rest is easy. I keep repeating the words
all the way down. Bam! Slam ’em on paper.
My Job Here
Afternoons, I walk my usual local route:
Sixth Street to First, school to post office,
tidying up the whole town in one easy stroll,
from blue dumpster to blue dumpster,
doing my self-appointed job.
Pop cans and occasional Budweiser,
rusty screws or once an old horse shoe,
a school note dropped on the way home,
McDonald’s trash from up in The Dalles,
or a coffee cup from We 3,
maybe a shiny scrap of a party balloon
but never a used condom or needle,
mostly candy wrappers, Jolly Ranchers,
sucked lollipop sticks out by the swings.
I suppose I should mention
the taped windows, trucks with dead tires,
tv flicker through bent blinds. But also
the young boys after school, how they stop
me and my dog in the street, tickled to find
an instant Granny who’ll listen.
So you take I-84 east out of Portland
where it follows the wide Columbia out through the Gorge
to a landscape of waterfalls and steep basalt cliffs,
past Cascade Locks where the river carved through the mountains,
and if it’s raining anywhere, it’s also raining here,
if the road is icy anywhere, it’s certainly icy here,
and then you watch for the triangle of Wind Mountain,
and the high meadows of Dog Mountain,
and you picture those expanses of yellow balsamroot
broken only by orange paintbrush and lavender-blue columbine,
until you remember it’s still winter and still raining
both here and back in Portland where it will go on raining
until the fifth of July,
so you keep driving east until the sky
shows patches of blue,
and by the time you have passed Hood River
the blue patches get larger
and the hills on one side of the river
have started drying out and then on both sides,
and when you pass that railroad tunnel right before Mosier
where you cross the line into Wasco County,
you are grinning
like a kid on the first morning of summer vacation,
and by the time you get to The Dalles
the sky is entirely blue,
and you catch yourself humming,
and at exit 87 you turn south onto route 197,
heading up Auction hill where the road becomes two lanes
briefly,
but just as you are starting to speed you remember
that one time you got stopped by the sheriff
and had to go to traffic school
where the instructor told you how to avoid the cops,
so you slow down
between cherry orchards and wheat fields
to exactly eight miles over the speed limit,
passing the sign that says
Leaving the National Scenic Area
where, immediately after the sign,
the hills get even more beautiful
as you pass Five Mile and Eight Mile
and the turn-off to Rice,
a town which no longer exists,
and you pass the turn-off to Boyd,
which barely exists,
until you see a square of trees ahead
which will be Dufur cemeterywhere you own a plot between two sets of friends,
one couple buried and the other busily alive,
and your plot has a full view of Mount Hood
even though when you finally reside there
you’ll be under the ground,
but you still like the view
so maybe you should put a bench there,
but today you don’t stop,
and in less than a mile you veer slightly right
to come down into Dufur on Court Street,
remembering to slow to 25 mph
as you pass the field of retired combines
resting like ancient beasts
and the ranger station,
and then, if the new yellow caution sign is flashing
because school is in session, you slow down to 20,
until just before the school but after the Grace Church,
which looks like an old western storefront,
here’s this little lavender house with a light green roof
and a white screen door with curlicues,
and the sign by the door reads WELCOME,
but you already know that you are so welcome,
more welcome
than you have ever felt in all your whole long life,
and you can forgive everyone who ever did you wrong
whether by ill-will or accident,
because you know that the chairs and the desk
and the bed with the high headboard and its garland
of raised and painted flowers,
the coffee pot and your books,
your grandmother’s pedestal bowl,
the bathtub asleep on its four clawed feet,
and the white curtains tied back with ribbons
are all like you left them, just like you like them,
just like the house has been calling for you.
Here’s the key warm in your hand.
Trying to Show You
Up here the horizon makes a circle
with bumps for the mountains.
From Dufur Hill I can see my house,
two states, and parts of seven counties.
These high wheat fields are golden
even if it’s a cliché to say so.
I could use ochre or yellow madder
but really the wheat is intensely golden
and while I’m giving you color words
a red combine comes carving a pattern
through the high ripe wheat,
its red a red between brick and maroon.
Now the combine is headed right at me.
I want to snap a photo with my phone
but the sunlight is so damn brilliant
that I can’t see which symbol to press.
That’s why I have to write this down.
You, reader, aren’t up here with me
so no use shouting Look at this.
I wish I could show it to my dead father
but what good in wishing? Look, I’d say,
how wheat dust rises to float and settle
over headless stubble. Here’s my plan:
to share this town with everyone I love.
Calling the Meeting to Order
Here they all are, assembled around me:
Mount Adams to the north,
Mount Saint Helens with the blown-off top,
our local Mount Hood,
and, peeking up in the south, the pointy tips
of Mount Jefferson,
each peak bright with snow.
Hear ye, oh mighty mountains.
Why do I convene you thus?
Because our town needs you
for greening slopes of winter wheat,
for heifers and calves grazing in stubble,
for the snow that melts into Fifteen Mile Creek,
for knowing our way home.
Welcome, tall friends, to our meeting.
Let us proceed with the beautiful minutes.
Frequently Asked Questions after a Poetry Reading
Where do you find ideas for poems?
What time of the day do you write?
Poems are easier to find if you get up early.
Me, I hunt for poems on top of Dufur Hill.
I start by tying my sneakers with double knots
before the dog and I head out for our walk.
It’s like a quarter of a mile to the cattle gate
where I’m always careful to re-latch the chain.
Then we climb. Often I bend down to sniff.
My wise dog has taught me so much.
A bush that looks like but isn’t sagebrush
tastes vaguely of licorice or maybe lemon.
Some days poems pile up like tumbleweed
but other times I have to wait a little longer.
The real trick is to sneak up on a poem.
I sit on my same rock counting mountains
as if I didn’t care about words. After awhile
the dog lies down in the shade of my knees
and I look west toward the forest or east
toward the plains or beyond the Columbia
or south for the small tip of Mount Jefferson
where it pokes over the line of Tygh ridge,
until the world is in place. And then, bingo!
I hear my voice speaking a poem out loud.
The rest is easy. I keep repeating the words
all the way down. Bam! Slam ’em on paper.
My Job Here
Afternoons, I walk my usual local route:
Sixth Street to First, school to post office,
tidying up the whole town in one easy stroll,
from blue dumpster to blue dumpster,
doing my self-appointed job.
Pop cans and occasional Budweiser,
rusty screws or once an old horse shoe,
a school note dropped on the way home,
McDonald’s trash from up in The Dalles,
or a coffee cup from We 3,
maybe a shiny scrap of a party balloon
but never a used condom or needle,
mostly candy wrappers, Jolly Ranchers,
sucked lollipop sticks out by the swings.
I suppose I should mention
the taped windows, trucks with dead tires,
tv flicker through bent blinds. But also
the young boys after school, how they stop
me and my dog in the street, tickled to find
an instant Granny who’ll listen.