1. We feed on numbers, irrigate and harvest plans with shaved efficiencies, measure our well-being by more or less with what’s on paper so easily burned or suddenly erased— we forget who we are. 2. We share amounts of rain, compare numbers with the neighbors, too often disappointed with what we need most: just enough moisture to revive this ground— this flesh and our more common senses.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2021, Ranch Journal
Tagged common senses, earth, flesh, rain, snow, Sulphur Peak, weather
This old ground is on the move and we have changed it with our dreams of improvement that humanity demands to level mountains, harness rivers, pump valleys to collapse with efficiency and startling success— then we foul our surgeries. Beyond the road and fences, these bare hillsides have begun to breathe since she spent the night, whispering upon dry leaves clinging to the last of life. I am awakened, as if she never left, wrapped in the soft applause of her arrival bringing the gentle miracle of moisture as this old ground comes back to life.
Thin starts lay limp as green fades to gray amid the brittle stalks of short-cropped dry the cows have missed as I open the gate ahead of several storms to search for Live Oak— stove wood heat with little ash prostrate since the 4-year drought branded in my mind— decomposing now before my eyes. Limbs ache with years bent to this ground chasing seasons of grass, but red skies at dawn reawakens the flesh.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2021, Ranch Journal
Before the surplus oilfield pipe
replaced the split redwood posts
and creosoted oak railroad ties,
we remember the old board pens,
acorns tucked twixt crack and plank,
fiery lichen on the backside
of weather-worn 2 x 8s:
distant brandings—
deceased men—
voices imitated—
old saws saved
that we exchange,
each triggering the next
underhanded head loop loosed
to hang for an instant,
we snare memories
like calves to brand—lifetimes
stretched from hand to hand.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2021
Tagged brandings, Natives, neighbors, recollections, Tony Rabb
The high clouds had given way to sunshine by the time we finished branding a little bunch of calves in Greasy yesterday. Well off the road, it’s a luxury to be among good friends and neighbors who are exceptional help, folks who know how to make the work fun.
Though dusty, there’s a little more green showing at this elevation (2,200’) where we have received 1.72” of rain thus far this season, much like the beginning of the 2013-14 drought year where we had less than 1.5” of rain in Greasy through the month of January. Our 10-day forecast is dry.
Leaving the feed grounds for the ridge tops with their first calves, native cows know where the green comes first after a little rain softens the clay for cloven hooves and the climb up. These are not dumb welfare cows that we have raised and fed for months— but smart survivors to make us proud.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2021, Ranch Journal
Tagged Drought, green, intelligence, little rain, native cows
The old timers built traps with limp ropes in small branding pens before the team ropers showed to take their place, as time overtook them and their steady horses. Almost anyone can catch two feet going slow and easy. Homer, Earl, Dave and E.J., I can picture them now roping just like me.
How could we know the plans of goddesses and gods with so much going on, busy saving and taking lives, sorting souls amid this Covid, while tilting the West out of range of the good storms— bare acres everywhere you go. If even a shower could bring some green, cattle market’s gone to hell. With everybody begging for change, the pipeline may be plugged with prayer overload, or perhaps our deities are just teaching a lesson.
Posted in Poems 2021
Tagged Covid-19, Drought, goddesses and gods, Mayfield Parrish, prayer overload, The Garden of Allah
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