A Portland Summer Scene
I just parallel parked on the first try.
8:09 in southeast Portland in June and the sun is low, painting the tops of trees and sides of houses in gold. I’m grabbing take out from a place that used to be a food truck and is now in a corner spot on a lively street. Potted plants sit snug up against a terracotta-colored wall flaking its plaster at the bottom.
As I walk down the street, a man is tossing bits of food to two black chickens wandering in the front yard of house. I don’t know if he lives there or was just passing by. He stands on the sidewalk and the two hens zig zag in front of him, pecking the grass.
Above is a canopy that stretched over the entire street where no two tree is the same, blocking every spot of sunlight. One tree has heavy white blooms in clusters, another is leafy green and yellow. Another, I recognize as a dogwood, with square-shaped white blooms layered thick and identical, all pointing the same direction, slightly out and up. These blooms last for weeks. The wind blows and the limbs, leaves, and blooms of the trees slowly bow, bend, and rise. Their trunks, massive and twisting, convey they’ve been here longest. The sidewalks above their roots buckle.
Another house I pass has worn smooth cement steps flanked by low shrubs grown together over years and two tall sentinel junipers. Past them on the cluttered patio lays a grey and white English sheep dog on its side laying next to a dusty water bowl. He watches me sideways.
As I walk up to the restaurant, it’s lively. People filling the outdoor seating bistro tables and COVID-era street box packed with high boy tables. Less trees in this area allow the golden heat to hit the faces of the people eating. It’s hot and sticky in the sun the way a late afternoon in the summer can be.
I open the side door to the restaurant where takeout orders are held and go inside. It’s cooler in here and someone brings me my bag and I’m back outside.
Four wooden chairs are stacked up outside the house with the sheepdog now. Beautiful and simple they wait. A couple walks by and notices them. He hurries over, crosses the street, and sits on one. His partner calls from the other side “where will we put them?” “I don’t know…they’re cool!” He responds.
“Get them!” I shout to them from my car through the window rolled down. “They are great!”
“Right??” He says to me while seated in the sidewalk chair. They load them into the back of their white hatchback and drive away.
I put the car into drive and pull deeper into the square neighborhood roads. My phone buzzes and I look at it. It’s a link to the post that shows our house is up for rent and it just went live.
