Pie and Poetry

A sweet friend had e-mailed me at 3 a.m. this morning saying he was saddened to read about the loss of my beagle and suggesting we do something fun together today. As someone who had walked the beagle with me on more than a few occasions, he knew I might be low so I appreciated the gesture.

We ended up at Pie because I'd been craving pizza all week and 8 1/2 is still closed from the fire damage they experienced. He'd never been to Pie so he wanted to experience the pizza for himself after the two scathing local reviews the place had gotten.

They have a $5 lunch menu from 11-4, with salads, sandwiches and wraps on it, so we started with a chopped Greek salad which was easily large enough to split and satisfy us both. The ingredients were fresh, the feta plentiful and we felt more virtuous for having begun with greens.

We chose the Cured Meat pizza (with Soprasetta), thus taking care of my desire for white pizza and the male need for meat. It was quite good with garlic, Fontina and Mozzarella and the desired pig product. Friend commented on how much he likes a thin, cracker-like crust which this was. We managed to down all but two slices.

Afterwards, he wanted to go down to the river to see the heron rookery I'd been so enthralled with, here, but the trees had leafed out so much in the past four weeks that we were barely able to see three of the 45 nests. Of course, any excuse to do the Pipeline walkway is a good one. We did see plenty of bird life while we were there, though.

Bird-watching turned out to be the ideal activity to segue into my next activity, an author reading at Chop Suey Books. Scheduled to read first was Tara Bray, a poet with frequent references to birds in her poetry, but it was one of her students who unexpectedly got the ball rolling.

As we waited for the reading to start, someone noted that what we needed was a slam poet to kick things off. Funny that, there was one in the audience and he volunteered to do one of his favorite pieces, written on paper after years of using a computer to create his poetry. It was entitled Soul at Sunrise and was riveting, a commentary on life filled with alliteration, wordplay and rhyme. Like the audience, I could not believe our fortune in hearing such a strong piece from a completely unexpected source.

Acknowledging her fondness for winged creatures, Bray's poetry contained references to starlings, juncos, blue jays, crows and the kingfisher, which she referred to a " a poem kind of a bird." One poem about pelicans contained the visually evocative line, "They float on the water's tension." She did have non-avian poetry, including a poignant piece about her mother's death when she was a child and one she considered a tribute to her three brothers.

She was followed by her husband, poet Bill Notter who sheepishly admitted he had not one single poem about his lovely wife, although he did have one bird poem. He had poems written during the time he lived in Mississippi ("I guess to say rural Mississippi is redundant.") as well as his birth state, Colorado ("I grew up in Colorado, but the flat part. But I knew about mountains.").

Of living in Nebraska, he wrote that it had "more space than anyone can stand until he leaves." I can't attest to that feeling, but I understood what he was trying to say. Likewise his line about a life well-lived which began with, "If I got run over by a sugar beet truck tonight..." evoked a world with which I personally have no familiarity, but became conceivable with his choice of words. Somehow, I don't think being run over by a UPS truck would have quite the same impact on reading or hearing.

The reading was SRO, an unusual occurrence I can say with certainty since I attend so many of them. It was soul satisfying to see so many people in a poetic frame of mind on a Saturday afternoon.

Obviously I wasn't the only one who needed beautiful words to improve this particular day. How lucky for me that they were just waiting to be heard.