This is the beginning of a piece. Please return.

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There have been in recent days some wondrous syncronicities with birds and people I know or have just met. They are not random. There is a form.  I feel the axis mundi.

The shopping center down the street  is a recent overlay of concrete and commerce.  I walk to it down a street called Brae Burn Drive.  There’s a Safeway there, a bar, my dentist and a pizza place. Cozy, I suppose. Friendly. A neighborhood.

But what abrasive names for  places where the Calapooia  lived. The Calapooia people. This was their land.

They are still here,  buried beneath the concrete. They have to be. Where do you think the Calapooia are buried? See any signs?  What about that cemetery on Williamete Street. What about that church, St. Judes. Any mention of the  Calapooia?

Concrete and commerce have changed the landscape. Religion and killing too. There was a holocaust here, right here beneath the Safeway.

Look up. The sky is the same. And the birds. The eagle doesn’t follow the concrete to the Safeway, or to the butte or to the river or around the four corners of the world. The birds fly as ever in timeless form. Look up and you see that forever, the Calapooia Sky.

 

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