Monthly Archives: August 2017

Where the creek stops in moss-laden pools
miles above the Kaweah in August, wild hens
collect with half-grown poults scratching for seeds

and bugs—aware, but not caring. I whistle
for a gobble as they drift off into the brush
as I have, into the canyons of lichened rock,

the Live Oak and Chamise. I am native
here, apart from where I came to forget
the blunderbuss of duplicity.

I came to be refreshed by the unafraid,
by the innocent and self-reliant—
I came to bring some home with me.

Mind gone blank: Zen empty
across the creek gone dry,
shadows stretching over long blond feed,

first-calf heifers coming out from under
shade to water for an evening’s graze.
It’s all the mind I need.

The news rains off my shoulders.
Even the eclipse didn’t faze me,
but for the fuzziness in my gut.

For a moment, it worried me—
so disconnected to the periphery
I had no need for poetry—

no need for anything but to breathe,
to inhale and cleanse the flesh
as it melts into the gloaming.

Robbin, July 2011

The answer in art appeals,
resides within, not without.
It adds, it multiplies

boundlessly: fresh, unnamed
senses like ripples from a pebble
spreading across pools

we harbor in our hearts
apart from politics,
from the legions of agendas

to satisfy the appetites
of power and greed
where might is right.

Art is not correct
and never stays the same,
illusive as the canyon wren’s

cascading song—I hear it now
again for the first time:
bear clover forever stirred

in memory miles away
in time and distance
trout fishing as a boy.

In the churning air we breathe
the latest news cascades from mountaintops,
waterfalls of misty details stream instantly

around us, tugging eddies we ignore
like bad dreams—waking to
and shaking off nightmares of fear

we carry on, we persevere.
How I envy cattle and coyotes
their ignorance, poor dumb beasts

with habits honed day by day,
moon to moon. Greeted by heifers,
nearly yearlings coming into season,

I can feel their flesh crawl with heat
beneath tight black hides that shine—
each day yet a new confusion.

It will suffice to linger among them
reading poetry under my breath
until they bore with my poor intellect.

I know all the old horses
and the men who rode them
to their ridgeline bleachers.

Full moon August rises atop
her perfect breast perfectly
after all these years, centuries,

eons—I am relieved from
the world inside this galaxy,
this tug of war for power,

gravity without compassion.
I lean toward the heavens
and the far ridgetops,

send roots deep
to good water and wait
until my moment is up.