A December entry

The papermill is slowly struggling to restart. The freezing weather meant lots of broken pipes and frozen pumps and other joys. Add that to the 6 weeks of downtime, and the complications were extreme. But, after two days of actually trying to run the paper machine, we began to make paper early Sunday morning.

However, our sister mill 50 miles to the North has been closed forever. I guess the powers to be decided two West Coast mills were one too many, and they have ceased operations at the Albany plant. The mill will be “parted out” to other mills in the IP system, and then the site leveled over the next 5-10 years according to the stories I’ve heard. That is indeed a major bummer.

As hinted early, the weather has been frigid. Single digits at some nights over the last week. Hardly (if at all) above freezing in the daylight hours. But, some warmer rain has come in this weekend, and it’s started to be the normal gray drizzle that’s December in Oregon.


Today’s poem is from 11:93


A ROOM IN WHICH NO GHOSTS LIVE

a room in which no ghosts live - the light
casting no shadows. it is the sound of november
i hear, the echo of ice forming. the wind
does not whisper down these halls. it moans -
like old bones waiting for summer.

the whisper that is night forming - another moan
from the cold wind that is winter formed.
i walk the dark floors as if a river
lost in the wetlands, where fog sneaks off water
& is lost in cold vallies, waiting for summer.

letters are collected, as dust, in drawers
that are never opened - perhaps there is room
for dark spirits, but none visit these passages.
i watch paper yellow, scratch epigrams
that offer no solace, waiting for summer.

in these dark rooms are forests where beasts
live & breed. i walk the worn paths
until there is nothing & i become nothing.
frost waits, perched on fence posts, as a hawk,
waiting for darkness, waiting for summer.