Author Archives: John

NASA

Posted on January 26, 2015 | 2 comments
Wild Cumcumber, Sierra Man-root - March 10, 2013

Wild Cumcumber, Sierra Man-root – March 10, 2013

 

No need to go to outer space
to touch the stars
sparkling at our feet.

 

 

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Mizpah

Posted on January 26, 2015 | 1 comment

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It was good to see the historic Mizpah Hotel open for business again in Tonopah, Nevada when we passed through Sunday on our way to Elko. Traffic was light across the Great Basin, as we only met 74 cars between Tonopah and Carlin, some 250 miles.

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TOGETHER

Posted on January 25, 2015 | 5 comments
Phacelia (Scorpionweed) - May 15, 2011

Phacelia (Scorpionweed) – May 15, 2011

 

If we all lean in the same direction
maybe we can change
the world.

 

 

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Ramblin’ Jack

Posted on January 24, 2015 | 11 comments

IMG_0172.JPG

 

I’ll be thinking of my friend Jack this coming week in Elko, Nevada, one of the first hands I shook at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in 1989, as we waited to get our schedule of sessions, poetry and song. I had to introduce myself, having watched him perform at the Ashgrove many times in the late 60s. Our direct link to Woody Guthrie and the pure heart of the working man, he’s been magically expressing himself on stage for over 60 years.

 

 

WPC — “Express Yourself”

 

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CHASING SUNLIGHT

Posted on January 24, 2015 | Leave a comment
Twining Brodeaia - May 1, 2011

Twining Brodeaia – May 1, 2011

 

Late to the party
in the thick of spring—
just chasing space and sunlight.

 

 

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INTO SPRING

Posted on January 23, 2015 | 4 comments
Sierra Tidy Tips - May 15, 2011

Sierra Tidy Tips – May 15, 2011

 

On the edge of where I’ve been
a vaster world waits
for me to arrive.

 

 

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ON THE SEMI-ARID EDGE

Posted on January 22, 2015 | 10 comments

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The big dogs are drilling deeper,
pumping the last of a million years
of underground water, each river

dammed into furrows to farm
the empty Laguna de Tache.
Sixty years ago, when red lights

stopped in every railroad town,
colorful cornucopias spilled
from billboards onto Highway 99

bragging fruit or vegetable capitals
of another world, and huge Big Oranges
squeezed juice every ten miles.

On the semi-arid edge of change,
we beg for rain and dream of floods
to take this Valley back in time.

 

                    *     *     *

 

1876 Tulare County Map

Wiki: Laguna de Tache, Tulare Lake

 

 

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HIS HERONS

Posted on January 21, 2015 | 2 comments

 

Easter 2014

Easter 2014

 

After rain in spring, I see my father
standing among a half-dozen others
atop fresh mounds of dirt, hear him

praise the Great Blue Heron as the best
‘gopher-getter around’. As the creek
warms, he glides up canyon early,

spends his days wading shallows,
coasting home in the gloaming.
Punctual, you could set your watch

by his circles to work each day,
depending on season and crop.
When it all mattered too much,

he’d slip up the road to check
the feed and fences, the condition
of my cows grazing with his herons.

 

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EMPTY PROMISES

Posted on January 20, 2015 | Leave a comment

 

March 10, 2014

March 10, 2014

 

Riding rafts of red above
clouds of dust,
we could breathe for a moment.

 

 

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IMAGINATION

Posted on January 19, 2015 | 6 comments

IMG_1980

 

How easily she could say,
‘it’s all in your mind—’
deny, dismiss what she knew

could be true, if we let it
when we were children
pretending to be grown up—

playing games
with our imaginations,
mornings drumming music

on eucalyptus roots
before the school bus stopped
our spontaneous chants.

With rusty tools and sticks,
horse drawn relics
and Model T wrecks

we took off for town—
took turns driving
wild steeds or hot rod cars

depending on time—just
as much as we wanted
to get there.

 

 

WPC(4) — “Serenity”

 

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