“I’m from New Zealand,” said Morgan.

“New Zealand!” I said.

“Yeah, I’m a Kiwi.”

A homeless man in his 70s named Morgan had just told me where he hailed from. He had been a regular presence in my Coos Bay neighborhood of Empire ever since I’d moved here seven months ago. We had held multiple, brief, pleasant conversations and Morgan was a big fan of Elmer the husky. In fact, we had introduced ourselves early on, and Morgan would always call out my name and Elmer’s when we walked past him.

New Zealand!

In all our previous conversations, I had never detected any accent, but then again, Morgan had no teeth and was sometimes difficult to understand.

But as soon as he said “Kiwi” I heard the accent. And the more Morgan talked the more pronounced it became.

It was 7:30 on a weekday morning and Morgan sat on the sidewalk, under an awning of non profit organization that serves the developmentally disabled. He often sleeps there when it rains. He was drinking a can of malt liquor. His possessions amounted to one small backpack resting on the ground. Everywhere around Morgan was tidy. He never left a trace after spending the night.

I had vowed at some point to ask Morgan his story of homelessness and for some reason, this morning was the time.

In due course, I learned Morgan had been living on the streets for ten years and residing in the United States since the late 80s. He was a tourist in LA, missed his flight home, and never returned. He worked construction in California and Arizona for many years. I asked him how in the world he came to live in Coos Bay. He laughed and said, “That’s a long story.” Doubtless, I’ll hear it one day. How could I not? A homeless man from New Zealand ends up in Coos Bay?

I asked Morgan if he had any desire to get into housing.

“I think I’ve been doing this for too long,” he said.

I asked him if police hassled him. He said one cop gave him an MRE for a Christmas present and another one threatened to jail him. Why the stark difference?

“They’re just two different people,” said Morgan.

A younger homeless man crossed the street and came up to us. He was wearing an all red, mismatched ensemble and bedecked with gold chains. A classic 90s white rapper look. He smiled and asked if he could pet Elmer because Elmer was so handsome. I said of course! Elmer dug that 90s white rapper look as much as I did.

I didn’t have any cash on me or I would have given Morgan a few bucks. Perhaps next time when we meet.

Elmer and I said our goodbyes and walked away. Behind me, I heard the two homeless men talking about my dog.

I am beginning my seventh month in Coos Bay, in a neighborhood known as Empire, which used to be a city until 1965 when residents voted to join Coos Bay. Sixty years later, that might have been a mistake,

Empire continues to fascinate me. There exists a level of miscreant behavior by some of the people in the neighborhood that defies everything I thought I knew about rural Oregon miscreant behavior.

A stray dog has started appearing at the back fence. He’s a husky/shepherd mix wearing a collar. He looks healthy. I’ve fed him a couple of times and he and Elmer bark and howl at each other through the boards. If he returns regularly I’m cutting a hole in the fence and inviting him over. If Elmer and the stray get along, I may have a new dog.

My one significant New Year’s resolution is to better avail myself of what Coos Bay has to offer as far as culture goes. I’ve got to see more of what’s out there: art shows, live music, new restaurants. To that point, I will be attending a production of Hamlet staged in a nearby bakery/restaurant/gift shop. I haven’t seen a live Shakespearean play in over 30 years.

I dearly wish there was an open mic poetry scene in town. It still surprises me one doesn’t exist.

An idea for a book about Empire has started to coalesce in my mind. It involves a tremendous amount of research (not online), which I love doing, but I would like to hire a researcher for $25 an hour. Working title: Juxtaposition of Empires.

I plan on putting in a large garden this spring and sharing the bounty with the non miscreant neighbors.

The terrible physical condition of many Coos Bay residents continues to shock me. I’ve seen broken bodies that I’ve never seen before or thought possible to break in such a grotesque manner. This place is nothing less than a public health and public education disaster with no end in sight. I write this with the utmost sympathy for these people. They must be suffering.

An entrepreneur opened a tiny video store in Empire that sells used DVDs and games. A video store! This is the only new business that has opened since I moved here in May.

Every weekday morning, Elmer and I walk past kids waiting in the darkness for the school bus. They are always on their phones. Will these kids ever develop an interior life outside of phone and the internet as they grow up? I saw the same thing in Portland, too. At those bus stops, a half dozen kids would be waiting for the bus and every one of them was using a phone. They never talked to one another. They never had a moment to think outside what was playing on their phones. And every second they are fiddling on their phones, their lives are being commercialized for obscene profit by the most powerful and amoral corporations in American history, and that’s saying something.

But…there is perhaps a ray of hope in Empire. Elmer and I often take different routes on our morning walks. There is one kid, a boy probably in eighth grade or so, a little portly, who is waiting for the bus AND IS NEVER ON HIS PHONE. He always greets me and says what a great looking dog Elmer is. He wears a fedora (!) and something like a man’s wool Pendleton jacket from the 70s. That makes me smile. I wish a good day at school and leave him to stand there, thinking. I wonder how he’ll turn out.

A purple and orange haze of sunrise in December greeted Elmer and me as we walked south along a stretch of Coos Bay beach adjacent to the Empire Boat Ramp.

Placid water mirrored purple and orange. Elmer and I reflected purple and orange in the mudflats. Have you ever seen a purple and orange reflection of yourself in a mudflat? It is something cosmic to behold.

In the distance, across a creek that emptied into the bay, I saw the familiar blue tent pitched on riprap three feet away from a barbed wire fence. It was the most inhospitable place to camp but had a $5 million dollar view of the estuary.

The tent appeared every other week or so, but hadn’t stood when a recent king tide walloped the riprap and flooded the nearby encampment.

Who was this camper? I occasionally saw him standing outside the tent, urinating and perhaps mediating. It is possible to both at the same time, particularly in nature, particularly when nature is purple and orange.

This particular morning, the man had climbed down the 20 feet of riprap and was standing on the beach near the creek. I watched him for a spell. He moved in a strange nodding manner reminiscent of someone high on fentanyl.

Jesus! Not this Impressionist morning. You can’t have a homeless fentanyl user in the foreground of an Impressionist landscape.

Or can you? I should ask a painter. I know a few good ones.

Elmer and I moved closer to the man. It didn’t appear he noticed us. We were now 30 yards away from one another, separated by the creek.

The man was not high on fentanyl. He was fishing! Yeah, put that in Impressionist landscape!

He was wielding a kid’s fishing pole and casting into the creek. He knew how to cast, that was for certain.

“Hey!” I called out. “Good morning! What are your fishing for?”

“Good morning to you,” he said. “I don’t know. I’m just fishing.”

“If you catch something, do you cook it up at your camp.”

“No, I always catch and release. I want to give back to the bay.”

A homeless man in Coos Bay with nothing said that to me. I’ll remember that line and this sunrise for the rest of my life.

We discussed the beauty of the moment. He spoke in unconscious haiku about it. Then it was time to leave.

“Have a great day,” I said. “My name is Matt.”

“You too!” he said. “My name is Herschel.”

Elmer and I walked away. The sunrise was fading into a soft blue. I took a quick glance backward. Herschel was was on the move, casting upstream.