Under monsoonal cloud cover and smoke from a fire on the North Fork of the Kaweah yesterday, the girls and I picked wild blackberries this morning after we got our chores done.
Under monsoonal cloud cover and smoke from a fire on the North Fork of the Kaweah yesterday, the girls and I picked wild blackberries this morning after we got our chores done.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
One hundred ten degrees,
a kestrel lights where water sprays
the onion bed and bathes—
then soon its mate,
or so it seems at a distance
in the fuzzy heat.
Now in the morning black
my desk lamp brings
gnats to the window glass,
and tree frogs on a slick,
perpendicular hunt, vying
for positioning, carefully
lifting one foot at a time.
I imagine now the herd
of tree frogs seeking cover
at the kestrels’ landing,
great hops into the thick
onion stems and berry vines
dripping with wonder:
new habits on a timer
every summer evening at six.
In the early stillness
when sky is white
above the ridgeline,
hollow coos
of Roadrunners
spill off dark hillsides,
a sprinkle of sounds
almost like a song
for themselves—
or for all of us
who have endured
these years of drought
to rise early yet
to carry on
upon this earth.
Blessed are the birds—
may their gods
be ours.
Following an old hill track within dry
grasses and trees, dust worn thin,
soft and deep by pad and hoof,
dark shadows reach for shades of brown.
Once blond heads of wild oats bent
by breezes, now bleached by the sun,
hang empty and delicate on hollow stems
awaiting grazing or a rain to lay them down
atop the rosy clutch of fillaree
claiming ground in brittle curls beneath.
Blue Oaks gray with turquoise leaves,
leather-like among the naked skeletons
of grandfathers shedding limbs, lesions
of good hardwood, too heavy to support
without water on these battlefields,
the wounded and dead-standing, but
decomposing monuments to better centuries—
a range of color spreading into dying light.
Posted in Haiku 2015, Photographs
Tagged bumble bee, hubiscus, pollen, weekly-photo-challenge
That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.
– Wendell Berry (“A Warning To My Readers”)
Those who work beside me hear
the gerunds and gerundives mesh
with coarser nouns and verbs
that flourish on unlevel landscapes
among the animals and birds,
or whispered under breath
in politer conversation
like adding grain to polished wood—
profane accents and accidents
straining to leap from my tongue.
The Elberta ripens
thinned by ground squirrels—
dogs bark at night:
raccoons down from the hills.
I have lost my car again
trapped in another strange place
without friends, backtracking
in my dreams to rise
in the dark, fumble
for a light too bright
to find my way outside
to follow the dogs with a rifle
to the gate beside the peach tree.
No eyes burning in the black,
barking fades out of range,
I am now awake
and wonder what it takes
to save a peach,
or why we bother—
other than its taste.
Checking water, hillside springs
plumbed to troughs, a coyote pup,
on the lope and looking back
as if heading home, is common.
Beyond the den, this is his home,
this is his water—we are
unknown intruders, enigmas
making rounds in these hills,
following trails to waterholes
where wild waits
and congregates
as it shrinks into August.
With our eye, we measure
flow at the end of rusty pipe—
with our lungs, blow water
backwards to the spring box
to clear debris and sediment,
seldom clean. Yesterday,
I got to be giant
with two tree frogs dancing
on my tongue.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015, Ranch Journal
Tagged coyote, Ragle Spring, tree frogs, water, wildlife
Posted in Haiku 2015, Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged Black-White Face, heterosis, hybrid vigor, weekly-photo-challenge