Monthly Archives: November 2011

Headlights dancing down orchard rows,
silhouettes of men, half-loaded bob-tail
stuck in mud, getting oranges in
before the next rain and forecast freeze.

Unmuffled tractor groaning over shouts,
tight chain—there was no quittin’ time
around Christmas in those days, no room
for church or grammar school recitals:

God helped those who helped themselves,
who made hay while the sun shined.
It’s all we really knew of the world:
it took all year to raise a crop to sell.

Before non-cultivation, stinging nettles
high in a young boy’s face, I followed men
swamping field boxes into the night,
and couldn’t imagine a higher calling.

Forecasts vary, computer models change:
dry rain of fiery leaves, stirred and torn
from the honey locust tree, clouds waves

in all shades of gray—a dark flotilla
peeks over the ridge for ships run aground
against the Sierras leaking cargo low

as Blue Ridge trimmed with white ribbon.
We sip whiskey, replay the week and squeal
like children on each gust, tip our glasses

to the work got done. To herds of virgins
readied for the Wagyu bulls, gentle ladies
churning under a full moon. To the mothers

with first calves driven up canyon, now
grazing the north slopes as it tries to rain.
To the four we couldn’t find by day:

awakened by their bawling for babies,
night lit by the moon, they awaited
dawn at the gate while we slept easily.

So much needs not to be said.
Old men grin with their eyes,
save breath with a look

of understanding, yet
the preachers, teachers and poets
go on and on, searching

for resonance, for the magic
words to open doors, when
all we need to do is look.

They think, see you carefully and read
your simple poetry as if an open window
to your mind. You must offer honesty,

kindly, find your rhythm on a hillside,
find grace and patience where there is
no hiding your intent so far away

from the corrals. This morning’s page:
steep—Blue Oaks thick on a north slope
slick and rocky where the grass has held

and drawn them, peppered dots of cows
and calves appear and disappear within
a raft of trees where they should be,

despite your sort of wets and drys,
despite the pens and alleys you try
to write around—they are content.

Another game in the backroom, smoke
clouds a swinging lamp, wagers made
‘for’ and ‘against’ the whims of human nature
as dancing girls serve, and serve again

all over town for a dollar. We could be
the carcass on the table, flesh sliced thin,
honed steel a glint, they toil and angle
like bloody butchers trimming the best cuts

for themselves. Outside, pimps and barkers
watch the door, up and down the street,
pretend to be selective, pocket bribes
and whisper, ‘it’s the safest game in town.’

No tea cups here, no cloth napkins,
no silver candelabras holding flame—
the play is fast and furious, full of
promises, ‘you’ll never leave the same.’

Always gambling on the sunlight, on
the rain, the planet spins its own roulette:
hawks glide and rivers murmur to the wild
that’s left without a dime to its name.

Awakened before three, I am relieved
to rejoin my dream gone-on without me.
Tracking the blackness, I feel my way
to where I was, what I can’t seem to be
awake—with all of man’s accomplishments.

                    There is no script, we write as we go—
                    scout ahead and fill-in the details
                    we wish to savor most, but careful
                    not to attract too many bees—private
                    showings we may choose to share

of what we remember. Dark hawk on glide
across the canyon surveys me and my
intrusion to this place hidden where I lay
in the saddle as a boy, waiting for deer
driven-up the steep draw and bare hillside

for a shot. Slick and Clarence on either side,
trigger to the heavy British .303 never-squeezed,
unnecessary. I still can’t find the little buck among
the does so far away bounding. But yes, it was
exciting, as good a place as any to begin again.

                                        Everyone praises a different day
                                        but few know their nature.
                                                            – Hesiod (“Works and Days”)

Today, the world changes—too many people
leaning towards the north star has tipped the planet,
exposing shadow beneath the tree that we believed
would comfort us and always bear fruit.

Yes, we are the centerpiece of that myth,
adding the last bit of gold thread to the fabric
that comes untrue, unraveling and fading
in the relentless, everlasting look of the sun.

Now I can remember, replay the finer details
from a distance, see myself among the mindless,
shoulder-to-shoulder in the crowding alleys
pressed onward towards the mounted silhouettes

in the sunset. But a corral board broke early-on,
around Vietnam. The sky was clearer then,
more obvious and less complicated, not everyone
leaned in the same direction, waiting to be served.