After nearly 2 inches of rain, everything is clean, having traded dust and smoke for mud and puddles, we’re delighted and relieved. Though we’ll be feeding hay for another 3 weeks or so, we expect our hills to be green this week. Though it feels like a drought-buster, long-term forecasts point to a developing La Niña with only a 10% chance of this year’s rainy season being wetter than last.
Around here all the gods live in trees.
– Jim Harrison (“The Whisper”)
It’s been tough on the woodpeckers: dry year,
no acorns in the oaks, yet
they still flap and squabble over bugs in the bark.
I can’t see the owls in the dark of dawn
as I wait for the black to disappear, yet
their mournful presence is good company.
Robbin likes the flock of little bushtits
flitting tree to tree, or washing-up at six o’clock
when the timer sprays the Mexican Sage.
Above it all, they’re smarter than the rest of us
to fly where they want—or most needed.
But around here we irrigate the trees.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2021, Ranch Journal
Tagged gods, Jim Harrison. birds, trees, water
2.
Drought and dust,
pandemic and the masks
we need to breathe and feed—
day’s end cloaked in smoke
and gin—how tough are we
and every living thing
looking to escape
to a Li Po poem
and Chinese tapestry?
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2021, Ranch Journal
Tagged Drought, dust, KNP Complex fire, pandemic, smoke, Windy Fire
1.
I can taste the pines and cedars when I awake
to fuzzy black to search for stars
beyond, hoping for a clear day.
Choking smoke with my coffee,
with feeding cows and first-calf heifers
calving, faded coyotes close.
Ash falls like snow, skiffs light and dirty.
In this haze, it’s easy to get lost at home.
I track my steps to where I’m from.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2021, Ranch Journal
Tagged ash, KNP Complex fire, smoke, Windy Fire
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