These poems are from Dot-to-Dot, Sid Miller's book forthcoming from Ooligan Press, Portland, Oregon.

The Dalles

This is the end of The Oregon Trail,
but nothing ever ends with water.
From where I stand the river is violent,
about to leap the concrete levee.
 
     The moment I stopped
     I knew I’d forgotten something,
     unsure of what, I reached all around,
     stood up and dug into my pockets.
     I’d have liked to replace it with a used one,
     but today’s Sunday
     and the Salvation Army is closed.
 
    The streets were near empty,
    only murals around—everywhere,
    unlike everything else, on any
    left over wall—of a history not close
    to mine, stagecoaches and painted
    strangers of no help to me in finding
    anything. Not one dry, cracked finger
    pointed to the river across the tracks.
 
In a moment I’ll be naked and atop this levee,
water will splash my shins.   Of course
I’ll never jump.  I’ve been called a coward.
I prefer to call it the capacity to let go.

McMinnville
 
 I take advice that finds me
when I don’t for ask it.
The sign that reads,
this summer slow down
and taste God’s goodness,
seems easy and reasonable
and I don’t resist—pilot
my wife  across the street
to the El Torito Carneceria
and leave her out front.
When I return two minutes
later with two chicherones,
huge and curled like the horns
of mountain goats, we lead
with them out front
to the forest and sit
on a fallen maple tree.
 
The first bite crackles
so loud leaves shower us.
The next sends a dead
pigeon to the ground. 
When the crisp skin
is only in our stomachs,
we are naked
and glistening from fat.
We hold each other
as best we can.

 
Silverton
 
You stand thirty feet away
from the public restroom, intent
on the gleaming white columns,
the manicured park that surrounds it
and wait for your wife.  When she returns,
she tells you the floor was so clean
she would lie on it.
 
As she takes your hand, you begin
to forget superstition, lead her back
to the covered foot bridge, to sit
down over the slow moving stream,
to suppose upon the abandoned
buildings facing it.
 
This is when you’ll start to dream,
confident
 
from the days donations,
the nickels you doled out
to strangers to fill
their parking meters, the big tip
you left the sad waitress,
the sympathetic glance you exchanged
with the high school girl,
scolded for talking
to her boyfriend
as he refilled the sugar shakers,
 
enough that you’re willing
to take the chance and turn them
into words, leave your hands
in your wife’s, still,
not knocking for once.

Mollala
 
You won’t be there tonight, under
the kerosene light, in the fifteen
by fifteen room of concrete
and corrugated metal.  You won’t breath
in the fresh cigarette smoke, those
bought from Fred’s Food-O-Mart.
You won’t eat pork rinds and talk
of the circus soon in town—the acrobats,
and cotton candy.  You won’t
win—there—tonight at the mini-storage
on the road out of town.  You won’t sit
uncomfortably.  You won’t shout Bingo.
 
It’s not that you’re unlucky, you’ve had
more than your share.  And it’s not
your unwillingness to gamble, just
look at your life.  It’s more a matter of time,
more exactly the time between, the time
between now and when the first
numbers will be called.
 
If you took the time to nurse one Budweiser
and then another, not just here, but everywhere,
not just tonight, but every night, then things
might be different, you might learn to win.