Taking the cows home
a week after weaning
snakes easily over the saddle
and down to the water
of collected dreams.
I remember yellow
Euclid trucks dumping
layers of native pasture
armored with rock
across the river in ’59,
flooding shoreline picnics
and ground squirrels targets
where the Wukchumne camped—
where Loren Fredricks
never learned to swim
afraid of the three-foot carp,
sun-dried, he had to ride upon
in a horse-drawn cart
up Dry Creek to Eshom
before he became a cowboy.
Snow stacked high
on the Kaweahs, we held
the water back when Visalia
was a town, spread the city out
with no water in the ground.
Blond cowgirl
on a palomino
in the wild oats
above black cows
and Lake Kaweah—
taking them home
a week after weaning
snakes easily over the saddle
and down to the water
of our collected dreams.
