Monthly Archives: October 2016

Welcome Back, Lee

 

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Down from the Cedar Grove Pack Station, we’re glad to have Lee Loverin back on the ranch. To have her spell my knees and back bucking bales and feeding hay is a godsend. Light since August, we’ve gradually increased the amount of hay to our first-calf heifers to help them raise month-old calves with growing appetites, and to our replacement heifers to insure they are in shape and cycling when the Wagyu bulls arrive in December. Trying to stay ahead of the game, our philosophy has always been that it’s cheaper to keep the weight on cattle than it is to put it back on after they get thin.

The huge Pacific storm that targeted the Northwest left only a trace of moisture here, not quite enough to even settle the dust. Nothing much in the extended forecast, meanwhile we’ll be feeding hay to our younger girls.

 

A WONDER IS WHAT IT IS

 

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                                        and what’s the work?
                                                            To ease the pain of living.
                                        Everything else, drunken
                                                            dumbshow.

                                                                      – Allen Ginsberg

I have no appetite for news, yet addicted
to reason less obvious
than the Emperor’s latest haberdashery.

Coffee conversation stops
to the quiet glide of a Cooper’s Hawk
beneath the roof overhead, limp legs

dangling, quail warm before breakfast.
She has chosen the four of us
to interrupt, to remind of naked grace

in a profane world—to ease the taloned
hold of the drunken dumbshow
before we hay the cows

and we feel blessed
for prolonged moments of wonder unwound
to remember who we are.

 

 

‘A WARNING TO MY READERS’

 

EVENING RAINBOW

 

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Into thirsty flesh,
we inhale the smell of rain
upon dry grasses.

 

 

 

Weekly Photo Challenge 2: ‘local’

 

HALLELUJAH

 

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Out of the southwest, wind
down the dry draw damp—
dust devils dance across
ground grown bare by cows

meeting near the water trough
with the run and buck of calves
finding all four legs to stir
hope for nothing certain:

this first chance of rain.
Time may seem to fly
now that we are older,
or plodding slower shade

to shade with less idleness
to fill with complaint—summer
long and hot, but shorter than
our partnership with drought.

 

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: ‘local’

 

GOLDEN RULE

 

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I would like to say that thinking
like cattle is preferable to humans
who need immediate answers

and science to prove them right,
whose urgency demands action
and reaction until the herd’s

thundering hooves stampede
the earth into atomic dust.
Cattle would not press any matter

enough to destroy themselves,
but rather play domestic than wild
given time to weigh your wishes.

Making sense of them you must
be cordial, shed your fear and anger—
try to remember the Golden Rule.

 

2157 – Twins ( 3 Pix)

 

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TO A POET

 

My reading slow, I hold the sounds
scratched on paper, hear a song
that draws me near, behind your eyes—

ten thousand rivers fall in moonlight,
all the stars like cold fire streaming
from the mountains and you are there.

Beyond them, beyond you and I,
we cannot hear or see, even in daylight,
swept up in the Canyon Wren’s cascades

falling into pools lapping mossy rocks.
My empty mind is full with your eyes
on paper I can revisit any time of day.

 

BULL OF THE WOODS

 

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He wears his father’s stamp
at five weeks, biggest bull calf
in a family of cows and babies

ready to hold his herd against
anyone of any breed
at first light crawling out

from under the black screeches
and howls of darkness beyond
the moving shadows of a half-moon.

We are born with it, you know—
instinct deep within the soft marrow
of our bones living with wild

uncertainty until our fathers
return home. And we will follow,
watch and try to help them work

all day long, learn what we have yet
to grow into—and sleep bone-weary
with pastoral dreams of peace.

 

AFTER BIRTH

 

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We come naked and wet
into a place knowing nothing,
blood stirring cooler

under rough tongues,
familiar reverberations
of outside sounds

clearing our coats of afterbirth,
cleansing the scent that draws
the cleanup crews on this earth

hungry for work, before
we ever nurse, before
we stand and step

up to the plate, fill ourselves
and face new lessons
best we can. Slowly we learn

to keep the faith
and our opinions
to ourselves.

 

Sun Cup / Camissonia

 

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We’re on the right track identifying yesterday’s wildflower thanks to Richard’s comment and friends of Facebook friends from CNPS. I’ve included the larger plant because I can’t visually confirm suggestions from Calflora photos, i.e. Camissonia contorta, Camissonia campestris, Camissonia pallida , etc. and to offer more information to those who’ve made suggestions.

This Camissonia is tough, right in the path to the corrals where a hundred head passed over it several times this spring. Our fate does not hinge on absolute identification, but far more interesting than this election.