Statue Sketch : The Thompson Elk, Portland, Oregon

Two Sundays ago the city celebrated the return of The Thompson Elk ( also simply called “The Elk” ), which had been removed during that awful summer of 2020 when someone had set fire to the base of the statue. Funds were raised to give it a proper restoration, and last week city officials and others came to honor it again. It is my absolute favorite statue in the city of Portland, so I’m commemorating it with an older poem of mine.

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STATUE SKETCH : THE THOMPSON ELK : PORTLAND, ORE.

1.

If WILD you must indicate its kingdom or a species,
registering HAZARD under the Arts Intransigence form.
If NATURE we’ll still need signs of European descent
— gargoyle heads for fountain spouts, for instance —
you do want the tykes to call him Bambi, it is true?
Well. Sign here if you want us scooping out the coins.
We have employees loafing ‘round the Civil War memorial,
drunk or asleep. What’s unknown is they sort & file
the Children’s Wish Department — I’m telling you now
so you don’t hire a freelance who’ll bungle up the system.
If you don’t sign the coins stay, the smallest hope unfilled.
Let the children grow up & come home drinking coffee
instead of chai, forever unmarried & poor.
All right. Now we’ll need a personal statement read aloud.
You can use the speaking trumpet if the traffic’s bad,
but I’m not sure anyone’s listening. The way you’re dressed
you might be taken as one of us, awkward in a new millennium,
attached to benches. Go on, the light’s just right.
A grey & green, and drizzling — still —

2

Recall the image, the city un-growing.
Portland shrinking in the rain.
Steamrollers pull the tar off the wide dirt road,
the road narrows with every car driving backwards.
There are the stumps — then, at last, there are the trees.
Rain clouds darken the forest early mid-winter, the forest
pitch-black. Only the sound of things is stirring,
tap & spatter of rain, a scurry, a grunt, a growl.
Stillness in the universe, a forest re-living, -encompassing
the smooth surface of the river rising to fill the swamp.
No one thing is seen but the totems are irreligious,
the crows chasing the peregrine away.
For such a time as time does not exist a bull elk
steps into the center of where a street will be,
snorts the air & turns his head west, deep in the dark
for a sound, or scent, or vision.
Night descends. Dew rises. The elk does not move.
Two lanes of traffic curve past the fountain beneath his hooves.
Call it Main Street. Name the river. Name the hills.

3

I’ll be plainspoken so it’s understood I love this statue
As I love rain, wool caps & flannel : traffic rushes up from the river
& eddies below his head, antlers disappearing into a spasm
of tree. So out of place : an elk, on the street, in the city,
an elk standing abreast & facing west a century ago.
City that loves dark clouds. City that drips, and sleeps.
Tourists walk by, their faces scrunched to rain, muttering Or-ee-gone,
deaf to water. To the sound the tires make flicking water off the asphalt.
I fling my dime into the blueblack pool, the torrent of hope
below his hooves. Money & water. Purchase & freefall.
I wish for the world to be grey again, shoving bare hands
into these empty pockets. Let the river run. I’ll make my crossing.