nika rebekah

we went to the beach. the river, the columbia, sauvie island. the drive takes you past my favorite bridge, the st.john's bridge. a tall gothic structure that began being built in late 1929, the construction employed many locals through the depression. it is painted green & lined with beautiful street lamps. i'd love to be caught strolling along the st. john's bridge on a misty oregon night.

driving through sauvie island, we stop at the country store to buy our day pass & popcicles. there are boxes lining the shelves with all shapes & sizes of metallic hooks & sinkers, sticky jars of glittery bait. & beef jerky. as we wind our way through the island, we pass small farms, berry season near its end & signs for corn beginning to pop up here & there.

the path through the woods is short, opening up onto a sweeping view of a sandy inlet, the columbia river stretching north & south. a large commercial freight ship passes lethargically, towering above the trees & creates a momentary wake, a sudden thrill at the presence of tiny waves lapping at an otherwise still shore.

we forgot a corkscrew. we walk over to two women naked & sunning in the sandy inlet (this is a nude beach). they have a corkscrew. one of them undoes our pino grigio clutching the bottle between her freckled bare thighs, as she shimmies the cork out. "looks like you got some good sun today" i say, but she doesn't respond. we thank her & as we walk away, i feel the perspiration on the cold bottle of wine & picture it between her legs again.

after a few glasses, i notice that i've kicked a bit of sand into the dregs of my wine. i temporarily amuse myself by counting the grains of sand stuck at the bottom of the mason jar, when in my state of sleepy drunkenness i lose count & latently down the rest, sand & all.

the girls do homework, patsy lounging topless on the shore, sometimes reading excerpts of her literature aloud, & just as often chasing fly-away pages in the breeze. lia sits picturesque in a cotton 40s two-piece bathing suit, diligently drawing contours of rocks & posts that line the shore. my camera in hand, i coax them into the high grasses farther back from the shoreline where they stand for me topless & the late afternoon light casts languid, waving shadows across their skin. layers of leaves & twigs, faces & breasts, superimposed, they appear like two mermaids swimming in tangles of sea grasses. i can only hope that the photos captured feel similar.

we end our day on the other side of the island, eating a small picnic on the banks of the willamette watching the sun fall through the trees. after gathering queen anne's lace, we wrap our hands in the tinfoil from our food to avoid the nettle spines as we rip the dried flower stalks from the bank. by the time we are in downtown portland, the sky is plum colored & it occurs to me that tomorrow is the first day of autumn.