drycrikjournal

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.

Wet and warm enough for flies
with the gift of Christmas rains
after a month of fog, slow survivors

cling to the screen door, follow us
inside to die by folded magazine
or the Western Livestock Journal,

perfect tinder saved to start a flame—
perfect weather to lure the green
to rise with black dots of cattle

grazing ridgetops with our eyes.
Inhaling damp, we breathe relief
and sigh how long we wait like flies.

Hot iron on hide,
singe and smoke
I’ll always recognize.

We’ve named mountains,
rivers, canyons and creeks
after the first cowmen here

or a faraway feeling
like Farewell Gap
or Hole in the Ground

that lasts longer
than the grip of commerce
and jumbled signage

where the flats
are cut with streets
and impatient traffic.

It’s human nature
to leave your mark
to not get lost.

Poetry is another kind of branding. -Gary Soto