Poem From Open Mike April 12, 2019

Laura Jensen 1960

 Portland Oregon the 1960s

Portland Oregon nineteen sixties

in its features in the night

in the dark a light

and the glow is in two printing fonts

one font arcs in a script that writes

Teeple’s, that writes Teeple’s,

the rest is printing caps that say

coffee shop, coffee shop

Teeple’s Coffee Shop

This is a possible reason

a photographer in so much dark

at Southwest Morrison at Twelfth

took a photo – on the internet the dark

is very pure. The neon is not so legible

but it is there, it is Teeples coffee Shop.

Portland Bureau of Transportation

This belongs to us all, a ride

in the dark. At this place

enlightened by neon.

The neon sign is legible

in another photo on the Neighbors

of Woodcraft Building

ornate and tall.

　

Teeple. A hundred and forty-two

Years ago, H. Teeple

appears in an 1877 Portland city directory

On F between Eighth and Ninth.

　

At an internet site called

Mapping Inequality, the block

for the Neighbors of Woodcraft

was at the corner of a redlined

rectangle, just beside untinted space

of downtown commercial.

So in the 1930s this place

was not residentially desireable.

　

This deep memory of the sacred dark

Teeple’s Coffee Shop

can have been shared too by

a genealogy question. Was the name

Teeple raised up high by its family,

Cooks in the city Directory

nearby the Alder Street Steeple

to grace all the knowledge

of a derivation? Like other

names in English, did it spring

from a location?

Like the steeplechase in riding

was a race from one town steeple

to another town steeple.

　

The neon sign

Of Teeples Coffee Shop

must have survived during

the demolitions and kept shining

from the other side

that during the freeway construction

removed a city block across

for miles through downtown Portland.

In one freeway photograph

Is the overpass new above

dirt the steam shovels cross

dirt is all that was left of the old buildings?

At Teeples Coffee Shop

Did breakfast follow a glimpse of

whatever surface became I-5?

Perhaps that was the progression,

perhaps close-spaced overpasses

also came ahead, and the Neighbors of Woodcraft

could cross along Overpass Morrison,

see Overpass Alder, too, above

the dirt floor below demolitioned for miles.

　

There are buildings in the backgrounds

of photos of the Finland singers

greeted as they arrived by bus

in Portland in 1960.

Behind Linnea Maria Riska

who lifts up her hand

and is waving, at her right

is a building at fourteenth

and Morrison. A four-story

industrial building which has many windows.

At her left a metal feature

of a square shape on the building

identifies the Morrison Plaza Building

certainly. Linnea Riska appears

in a letter from Finland in 1938,

she visited them

at their hotel in Helsinfors

before they traveled on to Malax,

my grandmother's village.

　

Some photos include the bus

Finland Singers Goodwill Tour,

And I - I am not out of character

the smile, the posture, I seem happy -

as I have appeared behind seated women

at Christmas

in taffeta and a white cotton blouse,

or - outside on the deck of my

dorm common room in 1968,

I lean back against the railing.

Historically, I have just signed up for Swedish.

　

In 1960 one hand leans upon the singers' bus

the sweater across the other arm

one foot rests across the other

on a posed toe. Happy, I guess. My grades

are always high, songs of the singers

are known to me, back in 1960

a few days ago in Tacoma

at the Valhalla Hall, I still recall

my dirndl dress and cummerbund.

　

In the photo with me,

above the bus a short electric tower.

Part of a word at the front of the bus

must be Standard, but the

d is not there. And above the

standard building part of a steeple.

A clue. The Steeple is a clue.

The steeple we find at the First

Presbyterian Church on Alder.

On the internet another photo -

the short electric tower

is one of others at corners of buildings.

Those buildings after the freeway

That are no more. The view of the church

though, is no longer blocked

from fourteenth by the buildings.

The church is there, and the

Neighbors of Woodcraft, now

called Tiffany Center.

　

And as I see photos on the internet,

a memory surfaces.

We stayed overnight in a hotel

on the car trip to Seaside

She had us go to a movie

so we stepped outside from the hotel

into a golden and rosy glow

thick downtown neons

and over to Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison,

about Debra Kerr as a nun

marooned with Robert Mitchum.

　

Teeple's Coffee Shop.

Think of those who remember the sign

And I as well. We carry the enlightened

dark along inside us in neon.