The crows are back
to claim their roost
on the service pole above
pump and water trough.

The quail are scarce
since the Sharp-Shinned hawk
has come to spend
winter above the fog.

The Sycamores have quit
drinking from the dry creek bed,
quit pumping moisture
to their yellowing leaves.

Even the old bucks think
their necks are swelling
after the first rain smelling
primeval, basic and good.

Evening conversation dwells
on a thin cow, vaccine
protocol and the dog’s limp

without a hint of politics
beyond the barbed wire—
beyond this ground and grass.

We don’t want to know
what makes the news—
what makes the outside world

tick with greed and power.
Evening conversation dwells
on more important things.

Not sure of normal,
I wake at five with
no poems pressing—

as if that early morning
well is going dry. But old
poems charge in the evening

now wanting to be rewritten,
wanting perspective on
an even more imperfect world

begging some new balance
we shall call truth, despite
the science of what we know

as the latest interpretation
of the facts, of reality, of what
we have to deal with now.

At six a.m., there is no ridgeline
to separate day and night, work
and sleep, dreams of what could be

and reality, balanced before my eyes—
no reasons sure without possibilities
I nurture and respect, keep alive

like cattle, a herd apart from madding
throngs beyond these hills, that become
my flesh, tended by these plodding girls—

that I believe at times that I am one
among them, ruminating in the shade
of the wonders before us, this perfect world.

It could be an old photograph
beneath a younger oak tree
standing in wild oats—almost
anytime before I was born.

The sound of change
travels uphill, follows the slope
from the bottom of canyons
like an amplified alarm.

Here’s where natives rest
when the flesh gives in
to peace with the world—
you can only feel them near.