Beaverwood Birthday–A Birthday Poem

(One of my great friends in Astoria recently celebrated a birthday. I wrote this poem for her to mark the occasion.)

I gathered beaverwood for a birthday,

for a friend who keeps me in sauerkraut and Maigret,

a bundle of gnawed sticks

strewn across the beach,

washed down from the watersheds,

to stake up her tomato plants

that probably won’t make it in Astoria,

but we’ll stake them up nonetheless,

in our sluiced gray gardens,

because that’s us,

our lives right now,

staking up tomato plants in territories

where they aren’t supposed to grow.

 

We rejoice in all things beavers!

We gladly accept what they offer!

We won’t stake up our tomatoes

with cheap bamboo from China!

All hail Oregon beavers!

When they roll lily pads

and smoke them like fine cigars,

we get it. We want to join them.

 

And when we taste those tomatoes,

later in the hot Oregon summer,

probably in the rain,

we will toast our furry bucktoothed friends,

and nod our heads in wonder

at their persistence to start over,

after high water destroys their dams,

but never their instincts or spirits.