The Bonnie and Clyde Files 2

It was a somewhat overcast morning and rain threatened. The rain just keeps falling and falling this spring. More, please. Keep the enemy forces at bay. It’s our only weapon in Oregon against the developers.

A canine cacophony from the Angels for Sara Sanctuary greeted me after I parked the car. My pockets were stuffed full of treats. Clyde is a fiend for treats. Bonnie just loves everything.

I unlocked the back gate and Bonnie and Clyde happily emerged. Treat time! I greeted them in my funny Bonnie and Clyde voices. Funny how a man’s voice changes when he greets dogs excited to see him. I can’t say I’ve done that with humans, with a certain few exceptions; they know who they are.

We romped through the high grass along the river. Across the channel, across the pasture, deforested hills loom in the distance, hills owned and clear cut by a spectacularly evil timber investment corporation with a secret headquarters in a clearcut in Seaside. (I’ve been inside.) Clearcuts regenerate, yes, and continue their plantation existence until the wiser heads in the watershed ultimately prevail.

I was clear cut. I am trying to regenerate. The more rain the quicker the regeneration. That is and is not a metaphor. Please friends, let Love reign O’er Me…as The Who sang…Only love / Can make it rain / The way the beach is kissed by the sea.

We found our spot where the bank slopes down to the river. I rigged up the writing studio in some mud—camp stool and TV tray. The tray is a metal relic, painted black with red roses on top, from a half century ago, from an era when families owned floor consoles and watched hour or half hour shows together in the living room, shows like Mannix or All in the Family, while eating TV dinners or tuna casseroles chased with fruit-encrusted side dishes of Jell-O. There was probably even conversations between family members. Oh the nostalgia of it all! The tray makes me smile. I am happy to give it new life on the river and provide material support for an Oregon writer trying to figure his new life out.

I whipped out the blue book and pen and jotted down some lines. Bonnie Clyde wandered off to prowl the river. Behind me, an ODFW fish trap counted unseen fish in the river. I wanted to know more about this study. Overhead, cirrus and cumulus clouds mixed together in ill-defined territories and produced various whites, blues, gray and even a streak of black here and there. A couple of small birds raced above the surface of the water. A branch floated by me. I heard rapids running. I saw wildflowers. Beavers were watching.

I looked around and thought: it’s a perpetual haiku here. I thought again: I want to live as a perpetual haiku, observe life that concretely, with the simple clarity that haiku summons in writers. I want my daily practice in all things to be that precise, too.

The water ran clear and shallow. I could see the bottom. I could walk across. It occurred to me that this was a perfect place for a frontier baptism and the singing of “Shall We Gather at the River.”

I remembered my baptism from the TV tray era. It certainly contrasted with this site for potential baptismal. I wore plastic coveralls and the tap water was heated lukewarm. There was a lighted baptismal and a microphone. The congregation sang “Shall We Gather at the River,” as I came up from underwater, a newly minted Christian.

Even then, I knew it would never stick.