Traveling through PDX this holiday season? Snap a photo of the soon-to-depart carpet and post to Instagram or Twitter using #pdxcarpet

and you could see your pic in an upcoming issue of Portland Monthly!

This being our history issue, we thought it an apt moment to say our farewell, inspired by T. S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men.”

We are the rain-drenched,

We are the fugitives and refugees,

Running together

Luggage filled with . . . bacon maple bars? Alas!

Our pounding shoes, when

We hurry together,

Are scattered to A, B, C, D, E

Homesick feet over homespun rug

In our sky portal

Those who have crossed

With direct flights, to death’s other Concourse

Remember it—if at all—not as ugly

Dirty brown, but only

As the hearth rug

The city’s doormat

This is the terminal land

This is the cloud land

Here the airplanes

Ascend, here they land

Turkish not in make but nobility

The twinkle of a fading carpet

At the hour when we are

Trembling with excitement

To board in Zone 3

Leaving behind that rug forever

This is the way the carpet ends

This is the way the carpet ends

This is the way the carpet ends

Not with a cleaning but a replacing.