About Longfellow Creek
Poetry and Literature
Longfellow Creek
A poem by Bea Khanphongphane - Chief Sealth High School
I am the water that flows through Longfellow Creek.
I flow swiftly through the rocks and twigs
finding my way to Puget Sound.
Nothing can get in my way
from my freedom in the bay,
but the litter and pollution in my water.
It hurts me when I am trashed,
because my friends the salmon are affected, too.
They swim with me in the springtime
to be free like me.
It’s my duty to carry them to safety,
to grow up
with the rest of their brothers and sisters in the Puget Sound.
It is sad to me, because sometimes they don’t make it
when they’re caught up in pollution.
But, there is a solution:
help clean up the earth,
help me keep my water cleaned,
that’s all that I ask.
Without me, the world would be crazy.
Mother and Daughter EarthworkingTogether
by Mabel Kosanke
(Reprinted by permission from The South Seattle Community College's Sentinel)
Rain. Jacket soaked. As I place the young seedling in the ground, rain drips from my hood onto my wet face, then rolls off the tip of my nose.
| Melissa, my daughter, and I volunteered to go with the South Seattle Community College team to work on EarthWork Day at the Longfellow Creek worksite near Greg Davis Park. Dedicated in the memory of Greg Davis, a landscape architect, the park is located on the northwest corner of 26th Ave. SW and Brandon St. in West Seattle. |
 Mabel Kosanke working on slope adjacent to creek |
After loosening the clumps of dirt and patting them to make sure the seedling is secure, I start back down the slope. I brace my hand on a fallen log to ease my descent down the muddy hillside (I have no desire to fall on my face where everybody can see). Chet, our team leader, asks if I am having fun yet. I don’t have to think twice before answering, "Yes!" I was enjoying this even though we had started cleanup, fixing and planting almost four hours earlier, and my neck ached, and the sunblock I put on this morning had smeared and stung my eyes. Why did I put on sunblock? you ask. I guess I am an optimist.
From the trail below, I yell back up to Julie, a horticulture Dedicated student still working away, and let her know that I am going to check on my daughter and her new found friend, Kelly, who have taken a hot chocolate break.
As I walked back up the trail, I considered my work relatively easy compared to many of the others’. All morning, volunteers pushed wheelbarrows up and down the trails with loads of wood chips. They cut back blackberry bushes to prevent them from taking over the trails. One woman wouldn’t stop working long enough to get her picture taken. Now that was dedication.
Lots of rain. Would I do it again? You bet!