Member Poem

My Celilo

For 15,000 years, native peoples fished Celilo Falls in the Columbia River.
It was submerged in 1957 by the construction of The Dalles Dam.

You know how they drown the falls
to form a lake and how that silenced
a wild river?
How they threatened the salmon
and poisoned the water
and finished off the Native, damn-near.

You are my Celilo.
I cradle your young body in my arms,
the tight weave of your hair brushes
my face and the easy brown of your eyes
is what I see when I look down,
singing to you.
Imagine the look of the tribes
as they stood on the bluff near Celilo,

listening, as the falls went under.
And I imagine your parents listening, too,
as you lose your language,
the first priceless words you spoke,
gone, until all that is left is a moaning--
though sometimes we hear you singing softly,
and my god, we hope.
We love you like water.

Sometimes late at night we threaten god.
Listen, we cry.
Hear the loud roaring of our river-boy.
But the skies are quiet. And the mountain just stands there---
the universe a three year old autistic child
using all its grace to make a way through the gorge.