Francesca G. Varela's Blog, page 5
February 4, 2023
Winter Afternoon
In the folding horizon,
a bare tree,
branches like the stiff undersea coral
I once found on a Hawaiian beach,
dried out, twig-like, sculpted
to hold something bigger than it.
From far away, the crows
look like fruit,
perched there,
small and ruffled,
pressed into themselves,
warm feathers in the wind.
As I’m watching,
a line of geese
flow over,
their wings broad and dark,
surfacing from the clouds
like rocks in a river.
Again, and again,
hundreds of geese,
and the crows begin to rise,
and scatter in different directions,
the sky awakened,
a wave of wings,
black and white,
and going,
and going.
June 30, 2022
Last Long Blue
The sky holds on to blue long after sunset, condensed from day soaking into night, a blue like the blush on elderberries, like water as a cloud passes, calm, over a stream. I want to reach out and hold on to it, wrap it around me, jump into it, this, the last long blue of summer.
May 26, 2022
Poplar
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May 11, 2022
Spring
It is the time of new green,
of samaras jutting rose-pink from pale, fringed flowers;
it is the time of milky elderflowers
and soft-leaved thimbleberry;
it is the time of salmonberry crowns,
hairy and ready to bud;
it is the time of the robin’s nest beneath the porch,
and the chink of hummingbirds brushing past cedars;
it is the time of unfurling.
April 15, 2022
Visitor
You walk past the salmonberries, the newly unfurling maidenhair fern; the false-lily-of-the-valley tucked darkly beneath the Indian plum. You talk over the robin’s song, and step through the bunches of wood sorrel, flattening their stems as you walk. You don’t get excited over a coltsfoot flower rising long-stalked above the understory. You don’t stop with me to kneel at the stream violets, bright green and yellow at a turn in the trail. You complain about the pollen. You see none of the life in front of you. You leave the forest never having been there at all.
April 9, 2022
Deer Tree
I stare at the tree with spots on its side, imprinted into the bark as though brushed with paint to mimic the soft, white spots of a deer. I watch this tree rock in the wind before the storm, turn darker under gathering cloud-light, its branches heavy with maple tree flowers hanging down like grapes. I hear the wind against the window, and remember what it was like, and the tears come down like ants against my skin. The tree is all I have to tether myself to the world. I watch it the way I have watched the moon, or the sea, or a mountain cutting up against the sky, all the while crying slow tears, sap raging against the bark.
April 1, 2022
List of Independent Bookstores in Oregon
I thought it would be helpful to compile a list of all the independent bookstores in Oregon! As a local author, I find this list really helpful when looking for places to schedule events. Also, it’s fun to visit local bookstores while traveling around the state! I hope this list is helpful for you, too.
Willamette Valley
Portland
Annie Bloom’s Books
Backstory Books & Yarn
Belmont Books
Broadway Books
Daedalus Books
Mother Foucault’s Bookshop
New Renaissance Bookstore
Powell’s Books
Revolutions Bookshop
Rose City Book Pub
Third Eye Books
Two Rivers Bookstore
The Stacks Coffeehouse
Secret Forest Bookstore
Wallace Books
Beaverton
Jan’s Paperbacks
Canby
The Book Nook
Oregon City
White Rabbit Books & Gifts
Newberg
Chapters Books and Coffee
McMinnville
Third Street Books
Salem
Books Read & Books New
Escape Fiction
Reader’s Guide
Corvallis
Grass Roots Bookstore
Eugene
Black Sun Books
J. Michaels Books
Smith Family Bookstore
Tsunami Books
Windows Booksellers
The Gorge
Hood River
Waucoma Bookstore
The Dalles
Klindt’s Booksellers
Hermiston
The Next Chapter Bookstore
Oregon Coast
Astoria
Godfather’s Boks and Espresso
Lucy’s Books
Seaside
Beach Books
Cannon Beach
Cannon Beach Book Company
Manzanita
Cloud & Leaf Bookstore
Lincoln City
Bob’s Beach Books
Newport
Nye Beach Book House
Bandon
WinterRiver Books
Gold Beach
Gold Beach Books
Central Oregon
Bend
Dudley’s Bookshop & Cafe
Roundabout Books & Cafe
Redmond
Herringbone Books
Sunriver
Sunriver Books & Music
Sisters
Paulina Springs Books
Eastern Oregon
Enterprise
The Book Loft
Southern Oregon
Grants Pass
Aquarius Books and Gifts
Oregon Books & Games
Klamath Falls
Canvasback Books
Basin Book Trader
Ashland
Bloomsbury Books
Medford
Village Books
Jacksonville
Rebel Heart Books
Did I miss any? Let me know!
March 28, 2022
On 23rd Ave.
A single tree shines green above the concrete, the sun cutting through it from the side, resting on the leaves the way I once saw light filter through alder trees at the river, back when I stood ankle-deep in the catkin-littered creek, and followed it out to the moss, and crawdads, and swirls of slate-gray; back when I plunged into the cold water, wearing my heavy water sandals, and floated weakly on my back, staring up at the cottonwoods, and the osprey perched high in its branches.
March 19, 2022
Distance
The seas in the moon that sink down, depths darkened and bitter and gray in the distance, mottled by space, by emptiness, by open sky that presses down and forms bruises, deep impressions that glow unbearable in the distance, can you feel it, distance darkened by empty sky, by the movement of birds, by the dance of the poplar’s angular branches as they scrape the gray air, the pre-rain wind, ancient and humid and stirring and about to brush through, tussled, waving, condensed and then all at once open, from branch to branch, from sky to sky, deep wind from the river swells, from the sea and the distant sun that brushes wild over the earth.
January 22, 2022
Home
I want to ask the sky
to guide me to that unfurled shore
in the distance;
I want to ask the sun
to dance with me,
the long-willowed dance
of my ancestors,
the two of us on the slopes of some mountain
below the suns of other worlds;
I want to ask the moon
to be my home,
wherever I am–
great stirrer of oceans, of the water in my own blood–
its great white light somehow warm upon my hands,
sweet as sunlight.
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