drycrikjournal

At Crawdaddy’s in Visalia, we celebrated the end of our season, our harvest of this year’s calves. The market was great but the weather was a challenge without a drop of rain in March. Subsequently, we decided to ship our calves early.

Robbin and I feel especially blessed to have these great friends and neighbors, spanning four decades and two generations from the Fox-Fry compound, to help us get the work done and have fun. Heading into summer and an ambiguous Super El Niño, we’re looking forward to another crop of calves beginning In September.

He was raised by the old school
of getting even with the neighbors,
ready retribution with a little ahead

if marked calves returned home
with a neighbor’s iron—
a bone to pick along the fence

like old bulls bellowing, pawing dirt,
digging holes between stretches
of down posts and barbed wire.

Too old to be a product of the 60s,
of free love, though he practiced it,
of cannabis, though he raised it well

enough to pay the inheritance taxes.
Don’t forget the automatic gunplay
when the flatland boys came to steal it,

leaving empty-handed
on the rims of a VW bus
blind in both eyes.

Each early morning step
towards hay stacked
for a pair of patient pensioners
and a grumpy Angus bull
ready for breakfast—
kibble for cats and kittens
while blackbirds swarmed like bees.

No rain in March.
May’s dry feed thin,
exposing red clay flesh
between distant stems—

I measure months against
our chances of rain,
envision streams of alfalfa
flaked across the bare ground
with silhouettes of cows
nursing baby calves
through winter’s dust.

The Daylight Saving’s sun
is an hour late to the party:

“Epic Fury”, Epstein—
Oil rising, Dow falling

while the Big Dogs
serve ice cream and cake—

red ribbon and party favors,
a cartoon and we’re invited.

Early Monday morning news
covers the planet’s quakes
and forecast eruptions,
minor wars and insurrections,
floods and droughts,
rich and poor, lies and power,
lost loving pets reunited

beneath a blanket of inspections
by the friendly UFOs
like gods perhaps
leaving commandments
to guide their human flocks.

Rattlesnakes, agents for the Yokuts’
Underworld, had free run
of Native households
to spy on the evil doers
for final extradition. Pity
I have killed so many.

We know the dogs’ bark,
coyote, cat, snake or stranger,
the horses’ snort or far off stare
at movement in the pasture.

We understand the nervous
titter of quail on patrol,
the cackle of blackbirds,
even the lonely owl’s deep hoot

just before dawn along
with the roadrunners’ redundant
chants of answers:
location, location, location.

The Buckeye forecasts spring
with premature greenery,
and the southwest wind
whispers a little rain.

All around us family,
each with a job to do
protecting what we have
in the middle of nowhere.

As a boy, I lidded grape lugs
field-packed when late,
tough-skinned Emperors

were king, chubby bunches
standing in papered boxes,
swamped and stacked

on narrow trailers
pulled by small 9N Fords
to our refrigerated

storage plant
where the grapes held well
through December

where I learned to drive
a forklift loading
eighteen wheelers

most often at midnight
headed to Eastern buyers—
drivers amped on coffee,

bennies and AM radio.
One so distraught
with the threat of communists

taking over—I consoled by saying:
they’re gonna need someone
who can drive a truck.

A strong wind on the summit at Gorman
lifted the long front end of my ’66 Mustang,
tires lighter on the asphalt
on the Grapevine between L.A. and home.

Behind me boys pretending to be men
circled ‘round kegs of beer, pretty girls flirting
on 28th street, open space and rolling hills
waiting in the dark two hours off

beyond my headlights. The war went on,
crimson blood in living color, mangled
Asian corpses, body counts and bombs
I could not drive away from.

I took chances in those paisley days
when living high was almost ghostly
dressed in another skin to escape
the politics and who I might become.

My folks have been grinning for eighty years
as they exit the church arm and arm
without a clue to the future after the war

where he commanded a battalion
of teen-age southern boys
to become bait for the Bulge

without their knowing.
My father farmed for his father,
raised oranges, grapes, and cattle,

and she three kids: boy scouts,
dance classes, trumpet lessons—
more than she really wanted.

And there they are
as I exit from the shower
still grinning without a clue.

Rising early,
the bright eye diffused
that blinds from the ridge

near the Solstice—
shadows from oak trees
shrink up the slopes

of baked clay and granite
that radiate all night
until first light.

The early birds are busy
feeding young
until too hot to fly.