SILVER

“It's not the icy bike chain rain of Portland, Oregon”

I've been wanting to say something about this line (from All My Happiness is Gone, by Purple Mountains) for a couple of months now.

To talk about how it stopped me in my tracks the first time I heard it.

How I needed to go back to the beginning of the verse three straight times in quick succession so it could hit me in something resembling the same way, before the power of the poetry ossified into a more basic form, probably admiration...

I wanted to talk about how David Berman drawls out the word Or-uh-gonnn so it sounds as abstract, sad, and beautiful as an icy bike chain rain.

I wanted to note how the line sounds like a damp collection of consonants and vowels spinning around in a clothes dryer, and how I want to pull them out when they're dry and warm and press them against my face and shut my eyes and just breathe.

Now David Berman is gone, and what I meant to be a celebration risks coming across like an elegy.

But this is not an elegy; this is a celebration.

“It's not the icy bike chain rain of Portland, Oregon”