Monthly Archives: December 2014

Monkeyflower

Posted on December 22, 2014 by John | 2 comments

WPC(4) — “Yellow”

2 Comments

Posted in Photographs

Tagged Dry Creek, Macro Monday, photographs, weekly-photo-challenge, wet seep monkeyflower, wildflowers

Fiddleneck

Posted on December 22, 2014 by John | Leave a comment

WPC(3) — “Yellow”

White Mustard

Posted on December 22, 2014 by John | Leave a comment

WPC(2) — “Yellow”

BEGINNING

Posted on December 21, 2014 by John | 2 comments

Snow up-canyon, dull green slopes on ashen
skies. With a few clear angels, tiny lights
dim and blink independently on the bare

Red Bud wrapped from last year’s Christmas,
before dawn. Leftovers after drought that
you can see from the road at night, singing

‘we’re still alive—’. Coming back to myself,
a black bull grumbles across the dry creek bed,
listening for the whereabouts of an answer.

First light prolonged at Winter Solstice that
I could not imagine waiting for us—I am
surprised with silence of this new beginning.

WPC — “Yellow”

2 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014, Ranch Journal

Tagged Christmas lights, Drought, Dry Creek, photographs, poetry, rain, Red Bud, water, weather, weekly-photo-challenge, Winter Solstice

Two Ranges on the Solstice 2014

Posted on December 21, 2014 by John | 3 comments

It’s rare to see across the San Joaquin Valley to the California Coast Range anymore, over the small community of Elderwood, from the Paregien Ranch, then look east to the Kaweah Peaks of the Great Western Divide, and Moro Rock in Sequoia National Park — a good air day!

3 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

Tagged California Coast Range, Elderwood, Great Western Divide, Kaweah Peaks, Moro Rock, Paregien Ranch, photographs, San Joaquin Valley, Sequoia National Park, Sierra Nevada, weather

FOR FAMILY

Posted on December 20, 2014 by John | 3 comments

‘Traveling the same track
makes ruts when it rains,’
I tell myself, shoveling,

bringing future runoff back
to gutters and culverts
as if I might make a difference.

They hear me in their home
and come to the chainsaw’s whine
limbing a fallen tree on the fence—

old wire that can be spliced
and pulled up into place
only they will see, gathered

in rock piles above me
like Great Aunts, lifting
wet noses to a light breeze.

I left the house with salt
to see the cattle, check
the rain gauge, photograph

the grass ‘lest my memory slips
again and spins a yearning
into some other poem

for Winter Solstice 2014.
We are family, these cows
and calves, this wild about me

as I stack brush for quail
before I leave with Live Oak
limbs—come home with wood.

From dull light into the dark, we
will roast a rib between us warm
‘round our never-ending fire.

3 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014, Ranch Journal

Tagged Calves, cows, Drought, family, Fire, Greasy Creek, photographs, poetry, rain, Spanish Flats, water, weather, wildlife

Image

Downy Pincushionplant, 5.5.2011

2 Comments

Posted on December 19, 2014 by John in Photographs, Ranch Journal

Tagged Downy Pincushionplant, Dry Creek, flower-friday, photographs, wildflowers

2014 CHRISTMAS LETTER TO ZARZYSKI

Posted on December 19, 2014 by John | 9 comments

Dear Paul, I’m not saying it’s over,
one never knows about the bigger picture,
but it’s rained and green and we got mud
instead of dust in the house for Christmas,
puddles in the garden. We learned a lot—
this blessing of basics disguised as disaster
made us tough, cold and calloused
as we tried to grin the bear down,
make friends with our dry realities.
(We’ll never run the ranch the same.)
I can write you now with more
than more bad news to add
to your rants to the outside world—

                      O’ Humanity, look
                     what we’ve become:
                      slaughtering children in school,
                      buckling under to cyber blackmail,
                      while Wall Street goes up over 400
                      and Congress smokes Cuban cigars.

We learned to retreat, keep our heads down
and ‘let them play’ as we searched for water,
fed cows to keep our future alive.
Are these not Jeffers’ ‘new values’,
the most basic this world has forgotten?

Hands-on people—we like the smell
of sweat, the sound of words and the feel
of accomplishment, day by day—it’s all
we have to share. Hoping to rekindle
our correspondence, I wish you, Liz
and Zeke some super-duper holidays.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

THE BLOODY SIRE

It is not bad. Let them play.
Let the guns bark and the bombing-plane
Speak his prodigious blasphemies.
It is not bad, it is high time,
Stark violence is still the sire of all the world’s values.

What but the wolf’s tooth whittled so fine
The fleet limbs of the antelope?
What but fear winged the birds, and hunger
Jewelled with such eyes the great goshawk’s head?
Violence has been the sire of all the world’s values.

Who would remember Helen’s face
Lacking the terrible halo of spears?
Who formed Christ but Herod and Caesar,
The cruel and bloody victories of Caesar?
Violence, the bloody sire of all the world’s values.

Never weep, let them play,
Old violence is not too old to beget new values.
-Robinson Jeffers