Winter’s Drive Along the Gorge

Our divorcee mother drove
the aging 1963 Valiant station wagon,
light blue (not nearing turquoise
as my older brother falsely recalls).
He and I squabbled in the backseat,
as we drove along the Gorge:

Columbia River on the left,
immediate blasted hillside on the right:
modern highway squeezed between.
It was always new, each winter week.

How could I not miss those idiosyncratic icicles?

They were singular stalactites showing off:
longer here, shorter there; dull at that tip,
dagger sharp just beside it; this one
clear as drinking water, that one white
as snow. One should fit in my pocket;
another in a giant's. Each different,
yet cut from the same once-fluid cloth:
downward motion made frigid, tactual.

Still, there was magic there,
seen through the lens of fabled child’s wonder
I can still occasionally conjure.
Now, though, it takes blessed effort,
not the simple ease of six-year-old
granddaughter on her way to the Ranch.




(cc) Karen G. Johnston