TWO POEMS: SUMMER AND FALL 2025

SUMMER 2025

July mornings warm between the granite
and clay baked canyon walls that soon 
in August will be too hot to work within

past 9 o’clock’s blazing sun when waterholes 
and springs evaporate, leaving only bleached
moss blankets to cover the turtles and frogs.

California’s foothill news much the same 
as 10,000 years ago before we came, July’s 
truth no one can change—no executive orders

to distort or rescind, nor histories to rewrite.
No children to let die, no officials to blame.
No houses yet to plant in the San Joaquin.

SEPTMEBER 2025

September dew portends
an early fall, damp
upon the solar panels

gleams before dawn—
expectant heifers waddle
to water, more solitary

in their plodding,
bellies big as barrels,
to graze alone.

A Nuthatch at the water
from the garden misters
collected in an empty dish

but makes room for finches,
sparrows and twohees
fidgeting in line

while I drink coffee
and steal a forbidden smoke 
one more time.