We look both ways
at the end of the road,
the well-honed edge
of commerce and convenience,
trucks and traffic
across the bridge—
river without water.
In their own world,
some deer forget:
quick scramble of hooves,
a clatter slipping
on concrete and asphalt.
We look both ways
wanting wild cover
and shade, leave
great hearts behind
to trespass
into an urgent world.
Keeping track of our cattle is never perfect, but keeping track of the Killdeer, even for a short time, requires so much assumption and speculation that it verges on fiction. Nevertheless, our Killdeer, defending the eggs in her nest, disappeared with her babies for the creek last week. Due to the drought and a creek that hasn’t run much for the past three years, we’ve had only one Killdeer nesting in our gravel driveway so far this spring.
Robbin noted that one of our pair of crows was carrying what appeared to be the white fluff of a Killdeer chick back to their nest earlier this week. We know how it goes, everyone is someone’s breakfast. But yesterday, crossing the remaining puddles in the creek, we found two chicks and an attentive, adult Killdeer in the cobbles and grass.
Getting two out of four to the creek, 200 yards and across the road, is a good percentage when one considers the gopher snake on the prowl for eggs, the crows and a variety of other predators. It’s a leap to assume this is the same Killdeer, but with no others around our driveway to the house, not as far as you might think.
She could have stayed
longer, spent the night
pelting the roof,
roaring like a river
over boulders, flashing
foothill silhouettes
to cracks of thunder
like in the old days.
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It was good to see her,
visiting like a sister
forty days late
with much on her mind.
Never aging and beautiful,
she spent the afternoon
outside in the gray—
left a rainbow behind.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015, Ranch Journal
Tagged Drought, Dry Creek, rain, rainbow, Sulphur Peak
Never really green with grass,
the south slopes tried to hide the clay,
standing naked in underwear
these past three years. Too late for rain,
precursor clouds let their shadows run
up canyon walls on gusts that stir
our dry flesh, that lift the hair—
each excited follicle reaching
to dance with the thought of rain.
Easter on Dry Creek is normally green and verdant with skiffs of popcorn flowers and patches of poppies on the hillsides. A month ago, I hoped for a long spring and time to photograph this year’s wildflowers with an eye for their expression as life forms, the evolved complexities of each species’ pollination structure, background lines and colors, etc., etc., but Robbin and I have spent the last three days preparing and planting our summer garden instead. C’est la vie!
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Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged Bird's Eye Gilia, garden, Macro Monday, weekly-photo-challenge, wildflowers
If we measured life
in moons misused and wasted,
how many left full?
And as the moon rises he sits by his fire
Thinking about women and glasses of beer
And closing his eyes as the dogies retire
He sings out a song which is soft but it’s clear
As if maybe someone could hear…
– James Taylor (“Sweet Baby James”)
I never see her leave
the loose nest of twigs
behind the cactus spines—
long tail feathers up,
eye to the outside perched
a week or more
near the water trough
while he patrols barn
and pasture, garden, yard.
The car’s shiny wheels
spend the night in the shop—
polished aluminum spokes
reflecting distortions
between each beak attack
gone from their spot
and he is confused and lost
without purpose,
without a job at dawn
searching in circles
for the foe
who drew no blood.
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Thirty days ago we hoped
for a better spring,
for clouds to rain us
back to normal
as we looked down
Ridenhour Canyon
to Dry Creek Road—
to the orchards
of Lemon Cove.
Hills now brittle and brown,
last year’s dead oak skeletons
have company, naked
as the Kaweahs—tilted
granite rock without snow.
Corporate Ag without water
drills wells to hell—
spending billions
into the Pleistocene
to hasten the conclusion
of farming the San Joaquin.
We had hoped for a better spring,
another month of rain and green,
creeks and rivers overflowing,
flooding Valley towns.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015, Ranch Journal
Tagged corporate ag, Drought, towns, Valley farming, weather, wells
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