We’ve been up and down the mountain to the Paregien Ranch most days for the past two weeks, packing a little alfalfa up and stove wood down as we get ready for winter and to center the cows and calves near the corrals for gathering and branding today. We have become part of this bovine family, welcome—always bringing something to the party. But after today, some of these calves will lose their curiosity, see us differently—they’ll grow up to feed somebody else.
All-day tryst in the middle
of milling cattle upon the green,
it could be spring in December—
good sign after two dry years of hay,
something normal like bucks in rut.
Mounting and breeding surround us,
black bulls weave through the bunch
with urgent optimism and aplomb.
No forecast fog, rain, or snow.
Monday gather. Tuesday picnic
upon the green with the neighbors
bringing horses to brand some calves.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014, Ranch Journal
Tagged branding, buck, bucks in rut, Calves, cows, deer, doe, Paregien Ranch, photographs, poetry, weather, wildlife
We float like leaves—
moments balanced
between extremes
we haven’t seen—
for small epiphanies:
the intersections
of imperfect circles,
elliptical orbits
of other planes
and gravities.
Season to season,
we float like leaves
as fodder for the earth
returning to the roots
and the skeletons of trees.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged cycles, Dry Creek, epiphany, leaves, photographs, poetry, roots, trees, weather, wildlife
Work women left in rock,
tracks of generations
since creation.
“At Wuknaw — Creation Myth of the Yokuts”
WPC(2) — “Gone, But Not Forgotten”
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged Creation Myth, haiku, photographs, poetry, weekly-photo-challenge, Wuknaw, Yokuts
What has become of us,
O’ Humanity,
quick to fire
at silhouettes in shadows,
raw anger mobbing
thoroughfares,
wars everywhere?
We need a holiday
off—a truce,
some space and peace
with this economy—
time to care.
An early Christmas wish,
a common gift
we all can share.
Rare October Redbud bloom
summoned Monarchs,
began a two-year drought.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014, Ranch Journal
Tagged Drought, Dry Creek, haiku, Monarch Butterfly, photographs, poetry, Redbud, weather, weekly-photo-challenge, wildflowers, wildlife
A song, not mine,
stuttered in the flame.
– Wendell Berry (“From the Distance”)
I was awake and she was smiling,
eyes speaking through the darkness—
tears of relief in my own.
We have our visitors, hear the gravel
on the drive turn under wheel,
without warning. Or the dog barks.
Or upon the happenstance of a phrase
yet echoing, they arrive
around the fire we are warmed by.
Living beyond the life we contemplate,
they assure us with a sign, align
the flight of birds with words
gliding, or in a whir of wings
they clutch our hearts. Are we
but aging flesh measured by numbers
and graded like meat to be consumed
by the machine, or is there another
currency common among all men?
The wells run deeper now
past the Pleistocene and into salt
at half a million bucks a pop
for the last of the water
as the Valley collapses
under the weight
of farming investors
for the moment
leaving Mom and Pop
and forty acres
high and dry
with one last roll
for agribusiness—
one last extraction
from a thirsty future.
No dirt farmers left
to turn the earth,
make sweet love
with furrows
and pruning sheers
for a crop to harvest,
wobbly wagon loads
to railroad towns
grown bright and urban
in a couple of lifetimes
farming the future.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged agribusiness, birds, Drought, farming, groundwater, photographs, poetry, Red Tail Hawk, San Joaquin Valley, water, weather, wells, wildlife
A man builds a house around a fire,
rocks and hearth upon the earth—
cuts wood to feed it, to stand close
to the flame when cold to the bone—
a luxury: he gets in touch
with the basics, with the tree.
Sometimes he says a little prayer
for the century felled or fallen,
or nods to hardwood cores intact
all his long life, stacking brush
for quail, cleaning up for grass
and cattle, like we’ve never been here.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged Blue Oak, Dry Creek, firewood, photographs, poetry, wildlife
She knows her wood
and how long it will last—
loves Blue Oak coals
and the Live Oak with little ash.
Redwood splinters for an ember,
Manzanita for heat and flame,
she keeps a never-ending fire
three months warm each year.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged Blue Oak, Calves, firewood, Paregien Ranch, photographs, poetry, wood stove
drycrikjournal 