On our loop of Greasy Creek to check the cattle last Sunday, we interrupted some strutting wild turkey toms busy with their rites of spring in our Gathering Field.
On our loop of Greasy Creek to check the cattle last Sunday, we interrupted some strutting wild turkey toms busy with their rites of spring in our Gathering Field.
For most people, a cow is a cow, but the grace of this native pair despite their good flesh, a seven year-old Hereford cow and her heifer calf, approaches the perfection of motherhood for me, reminding of an ode included in “Poems from Dry Creek” and published by Starhaven in 2008.
IO
On the horns of an infant moon,
the creek shrinks and pools
between sycamores and live oaks
as babies come to first-time mothers
bringing the bear tracks downcanyon
on the scent of spent placentas.
Black progeny of the river nymph –
white heifer driven madly by Hera’s
gadfly Oestrus to cross continents
and populate Asia – find maternity
perplexing at first. Yet, lick and nuzzle
the stumbling wet struggle to stand,
suckle and rest that enflames instinct
in all flesh. Worthy timeless worship,
no better mother ever than a cow.
The earth like a clean sheet waits
for dawn through cold, gray cumulous
stacked atop hillsides of bare, dark clay
after a thunderstorm’s harsh scouring—
each thin blade stimulated, invigorated
to meet tomorrow with alacrity,
reckless grins upon every face
and we, foolishly, have no choice
but to imitate the mob’s delight
and forget the dry for a moment
to consider the range of this miracle—
of our goddess-come-home-late
and gone-so-long we have forgotten
what she looks like—what we
have taken for granted, and why.
One measure of yesterday’s rain event, the largest all season long, are the puddles in the horse pasture the Wood Ducks have yet to find early this morning, many of which have left Dry Creek without nesting. Two related thunderstorms poured through the afternoon and into the night to leave 1.91″ in the gauge, roughly 25% of our season’s total. This will prolong our feed in the granite above 2,000 feet for two or three more weeks and add life to our stock water ponds. I don’t expect much impact to what’s left of the feed on our clay slopes at the lower elevations, but anything that may be still green will appreciate the moisture.
The past two dry years have been tough on the Great Blue Herons here, resorting to year-round rodent hunting to sustain themselves. With a measureable flow for only 18 days this year, absorbed before it made it to the Kaweah River, Dry Creek peaked at 9 cfs on April 3rd, compared to the 2010-11 season when Dry Creek ran until September 4, 2011. It’s too late for the chance of showers (and thunderstorms) today and tonight to help our feed or the herons much other than settle the dust and temporarily change the smell of things with only 5.67” of rain since October 2013. Those are the numbers, but one look at our April feed conditions says it all.
An image branded in my brain during the devastating Drought of 1977 is that of a Great Blue Heron fishing from the concrete bank of the Friant-Kern Canal near Exeter that gave me hope, that demonstrated their adaptability to me. No wonder they have become our totems—now if we can just take their lead.
Posted in Photographs
Tagged adaptability, Drought, Dry Creek flow, Friant-Kern Canal, Great Blue Heron, Kaweah River, photographs, water, weather
How comes it that he wrote a book
of five thousand words?
translated by Arthur Waley (“Po Chü-I on Lao-tzü”)
“Let them talk,” old Tom Davis said,
“to see what they don’t know.”
has worked well-enough for me—
yet I write incessantly: lay bare
my innocence and ignorance
on recyclable paper no cowmen
dare read. Out here, the approach
to good or bad speaks for itself,
and is remembered—but in between,
the indomitable art on the wing
is humbling and leaves us speechless.
Already, I have said too much.
Posted in Poems 2014
Tagged Chinese Poetry, Lao-tzü, Po Chü-I, Po Chü-I on Lao-tzü, poetry, Tom Davis
Still blooming!
Most days, they can’t see
outside the fort, foothills full
of native ghosts in wild skins
and fine feathers, or the clouds
that boil, fume and sometimes
storm for the fun of it.
Busy with new rules to keep
the stockade safe, they can’t hear
the coyote’s wail in the street—
we live outside its walls
by the same laws
the bird and animal people left us.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged Fort Visalia, Frank Latta, Nathaniel Vise, photographs, poetry, rain, red sky, Tulare County History, weather, Yokuts