Poems by Blake Parkinson

Hanford Reach, North Slope

by Blake Parkinson

From Canary Winter 2019-20

Blake resides in the Inland Northwest, roughly two hundred miles east of the Cascade Crest, as the crow flies. He lives on a promontory bounded by the Spokane River to the north and Latah Creek to the west, and begins many mornings by descending to their confluence.

Deep winter finally arrived,
I stay alone inside for days,
can’t see through falling
snow that fills my windows,
blocks the faint sun.

A week ago fog filled these streets,
and Saturday, I woke early,
drove to meet a woman
from my past, two hours there
and two more back, the air so thick
I could see almost nothing.

We met for coffee, then she drove us
out into the desert, where we
hiked along white bluffs and over
rolling dunes, looking down on a river
polluted by plutonium. Not far from here
they made enough for sixty thousand bombs....

We stopped to watch the slow
bend of the water, and though
there was no horizon through the fog,
for a moment an opening, high up
in the clouds, revealed a quiet
February blue— and then was gone.

Desert flora dry and dormant,
fragile leaves bleached white
against the umber sand, I knelt
to take a picture of my hand
next to a line of bird tracks—
their prints everywhere,
but none in the air.

She walked far ahead most of the day,
which was fine—
I stayed behind
to photograph the plants,
the sweeping sand, and her dark,
receding shape, standing out against the grey.