It’s swirling now around the planet
bumping the coasts of continents
with the miracle of rain
sustaining earth and flesh
by the design of details
yet to be noticed and digitized
when Dad would watch neighbor’s windmill
for confirmation, three days out
of the southwest, or by his journaled cycles
see seventy percent success. Instead of signs,
we await the forecast and cuss
the weatherman when wrong.
for Marge Stiles (1919-2005)
We ride away from each other, waving our hands, While our horses neigh softly, softly . . . Li Po (“Taking Leave of a Friend”) No Luddite sure, yet technology’s unwanted intrusion reminds of the woodpecker’s rapid-fire assault on the eave, on the metal roof, on the smudge pot lids closed cold in the orchard when I was a boy. I wonder about their rattled minds, what natural shock absorbers slide like hydraulic cylinders between bill and brain to cushion their rat-tat-tat attacks on the world. Our push button culture saves jillions of steps that leave invisible trails nonetheless, for invaders we don’t want to see, don’t care about— yet tech has allowed me to know you and Chinese poetry from half-way ‘round this distressed planet.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2025, poetry
Tagged Leonard Durso, technology, woodpeckers
I am amused with the new vocabulary of weathermen like “hydroclimate whiplash” during the atmospheric rivers a couple of years ago. I just read a new one, we’re on day 21 of our “tule stratus” as we head to Paregien’s to gather for Wednesday’s branding where hopefully we’ll be above the fog.
In the canyon
fog descending at dusk,
a gray blanket tucks us in
along the creek’s flaming sycamores
and silent trickle.
Wrapped in a cold cocoon,
insulated from the dreadful dramas
of an outside world,
we rest easily in the dark
with a taste of peace.
Cold and damp, we wake to add split oak
to coals banked in the woodstove
and wait for dawn’s dim light to see
how thick the fog that has consumed us
for weeks—and the cows and calves
we must gather before we brand,
before the rains leave dirt tracks
too slick to travel up the mountain—
bull calves to sell instead of steers for less.
An ocean of fog with islands of green,
a world below where commerce
and consumption carry-on conveniently,
where pundits and politicians spar
for the last word, and the weathermen
guess what Nature has left to teach us.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2025, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged branding, cattle, fog, nature, rain, weather, weathermen
How nice it was to see the sun above the fog topping out at 1,800 feet, temperature in the high 70s. Down on Dry Creek this a.m. it was 35 degrees.
We went up to the Paregien Ranch to make some repairs to the corrals and cut some dead trees out of our dirt roads and off the fences. The oaks that died during the 2012-2016 drought are really tipping over now. A joy to work in the sunshine before we brand calves next week.
No star or moon light,
nor sun upon my skin
for half-a-month
in a cave of fog,
partly insulated
from the shenanigans
of men at the trough
making laws
making sure
they can still deal
a gourmet meal
on the house:
our planet earth
giving up its wealth
instead of wisdom
for those that listen.
IGNITION
The hillside Blue Oaks beneath the fog
round as mushrooms upon December green,
darkened mounds that have survived
the seasons for centuries speaking
what I can’t translate, yet admire above
the sycamores that hem the creek
as they catch fire—flaming colors
on the thirteenth successive day of fog
warm heart and mind despite the gray.
****
MURMURATION
The starlings swarm like bees,
murmuration, hundreds synchronized
in flight by unspoken cues to flare
and light en masse to peck and graze
the green, before that cerebral notion rises
into the sky with a synchronized dance.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2025, Ranch Journal
Tagged Blue Oaks, fog, photography, poetry, starlings, sycamores, weather
It hasn’t come “on little cat’s feet” (Carl Sandburg), instead a blanket hanging for 10 days straight, a “radiation fog” as it’s now named, 44 degrees high yesterday, 38 degrees this a.m.
Of course, nothing compared to the snow storms elsewhere, but our grass needs sunshine. Other places in the San Joaquin Valley have experienced zero visibility, and often here the low lying fog spills over the ridge clear down to the creek. Perhaps tomorrow we’ll get some sun.
Around Christmas,
I’d wake to my father
asleep on the floor
facing the fireplace
of the old Coffelt house
with high gray ceilings,
his brown sweater
reeking of #2 diesel
and I’d lay beside him
as he snored.
He’d been up and down
all night checking temperatures,
lighting smudge pot sentries
whose flaming helmets
surrounded his father’s
orchards of oranges
to turn back a freeze,
or climbing towers
with spinning turrets
to start the flathead Ford’s
twin prop wind machines.
I begged to go with him
block to block
passing Ike Clark’s lean-to
of old scrap boards catching fire
from two lit smudge pots
and bottled heat
with him asleep
on gunny sacks of straw.
Dad pulled him free
as we watched the shelter
disappear.
My mother suffered most
the suet that leaked
inside the house
from the black cloud
that hung over
Exeter’s crop of gold.
to ship East
and the new dress
she bought for a Christmas
party in Visalia
she never got to wear
because the freezing weather
claimed my Dad.
She never forgave him.
Posted in Poems 2025, poetry
Tagged freeze, Ike Clrk, oranges, poetry, smudge pots, wind machines
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