Monthly Archives: July 2011

Steers at Dawn

Posted on July 9, 2011 by | Leave a comment

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ON THE RIO DE SAN FRANCISCO

Posted on July 8, 2011 by | Leave a comment

                        “If you keep the faith I will exist
                        at the edge, where your vision joins
                        the sunlight and the rain: heads in the light,
                        feet that go down into the mud where the truth is.”
                                – William Stafford (“Spirit of Place: Great Blue Heron”)

In a dark corner of my cerebrum,
hangs a painting framed like a window
to a bright summer’s day, a Blue Heron

fishing from the steep concrete bank
of the Friant-Kern Canal, legs braced
at the edge of snowmelt snaking

through foothill orchards south –
faded black stenciled letters saying:
STAY ALIVE BY STAYING OUT.

Far from the noisy rookery in the tops
of sycamores above the bogs and frogs,
a tourist, an opportunist, this old will

adapts to all kinds of weather to outlive
our politics, our genius and mistakes –
as good a place as any to hang hope.

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RENAISSANCE

Posted on July 6, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Each dawn anew, each second fresh
as light intrudes upon the night,
and our dreams beneath the darkness,

running freely, picking paths
of possibility – we face each day,
uniquely. Gray pinto sky reminds

of Gino Sky somewhere in Idaho –
still wearing speedos, writing poetry?
His shiny airstreams hang upon

a necklace spread across mountains –
the land alive, the hatching and dying
we cannot escape – no day the same

on earth, as sunspots subside. Busy
Copernicus, setting us free of our
egocentricities to awaken in time.

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Internet Auction

Posted on July 6, 2011 by | Leave a comment

A last minute decision to list our steer calves on the internet auction required some photographs yesterday afternoon, 104º in the shade where most of the steers were. Live sale this morning at 9:00 a.m. PDT, roundupcattle With only a few lots selling, it won’t take long to watch this option in the ongoing evolution of marketing and selling cattle. Though some quality was lost, the photos were emailed to roundup cattle.com in time to make the catalog last night. Our sense of amazement comes with an equal part of nervousness as a year’s worth of care and attention comes down to a few seconds of bidding before the gavel falls.

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NEW HATCH

Posted on July 5, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Delights as small as quail
born on the run between
thick, yellow forests

of dry brittle grasses, tiny
coveys trailing one another’s
dust into hiding amid

imperative titters, little
hearts-a-thump with panic
in bare, brand-new chests –

innocence and instinct
stirred to forever flutter
before they can fly.

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Independence Day, 2011

Posted on July 4, 2011 by | 1 comment

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The great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
                        – Emerson, “Self Reliance,” Essays First Series (1841)

The most affluent man is he that confronts all the shows he sees by equivalents out of the stronger wealth of himself.
                        – Walt Whitman, Preface to the “Leaves of Grass” (1855)

Independence is for the very few; it is a privilege of the strong.
                        – Nietzsche, “Beyond Good and Evil” (1886)

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
                        – George Bernard Shaw, “Maxims for Revolutionists,” Man and                         Superman (1903)

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
                        – Einstein, “Out of My Later Years” (1950)

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A. M. DREAMS

Posted on July 3, 2011 by | 1 comment

Summer dawn, wild oats blond,
they wake from dreams beyond
ridgeline silhouettes and think

of me, or someone like me
with sweet alfalfa leaf – young cows
to be, their flesh fills, springs

pink around me and I am pleased.
They feel it as I move through
our congregation on this hillside.

The road below fills with pickups
towing toys, the purr of hopped-up
four-wheel drives, tents and trailers

like blood pumped into the mountains
where snowmelt leaks and tumbles
into treacherous streams, rivers

hungry for adventurous ignorance –
her breasts heave. These girls and I
have closed that other world away

and speak to the moment, study
one another’s movement. I dream
of them – and them of me.

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Posted in Poems 2011