Author Archives: John

WHERE THE BOYS ARE

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I inhale deeply. Cigarette,
bad air, taste of damp earth
spinning in a picture too big to see.

Against one another,
the young bulls rub like teen-age
boys built for work, flexing

between play and combat,
clods of first-rain mud
dried upon their foreheads,

they sway like one beast
plodding towards hay,
from habit more than hunger.

In two weeks, bellows
will fill the canyon, the world
will change from maternal peace

to untamed cacophony,
primal roars and screams
piercing our pastoral quietude

for another calf, another day—
one more season of grass
to inhale deeply.

 

INDIGNANT

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Interrupting a face full
of the good life
can draw disturbing looks.

 

 

WPC(4) — “Minimalist”

DAY ONE

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Since Day One, drawn
to the fire, meat and music—
new words to an old song.

 

 

WPC(3) — “Minimalist”

 

DOWN IN THE VALLEY

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Bad air from the Bay
trapped beneath the warm
sunshine and new grass growing.

 

 

WPC(2) — “Minimalist”

 

STRAWBERRY CLOVER

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Wild explosions in orbit
just above the green feed
around our feet.

 

 

WPC(1) — “Minimalist”

 

COTYLEDONS—RED STEM FILAREE

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With rain upon the loose debris
of last year’s feed,
come first leaves of grass.

 

 

DEEDS OF TRUST

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When the earth can be worked, they come
to investigate. Horses peer over fences,
cattle stare through barbed wire, but

the Roadrunners come in pairs like cops
on patrol inspecting changes to the ground
they claim, including us, without fear.

The quail fall out of the Live Oaks
well after dawn, tittering like children
late for school, gray coveys rolling

off the hill to graze new ways
to the water trough, and we claim them
all like family, one that gets along—

a sense of belonging greater
than ownership, taken root and proven
to be more than enough to feel secure.

 

 

Surprise Feeding

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It’s a waiting game now for our bare hills to take on a shade of green as the first cotyledons of our grass seed break the crust left after Friday and Saturday’s remarkable rain. It’s not typical to begin our rainy season with 1.76” on Dry Creek, or 2.62” in Greasy Creek. Usually, we hope to get a half-inch to start the grass, but more often than not fail after our first storm event.

Everybody’s hungry and there’s really not much to eat, actually less immediately after a rain, other than what we are feeding our cows. With some calves two months old and growing, demanding more from their mothers, it’s starting to show on the cows, less fleshy now than a month ago. We’ve been increasing the amount we’re feeding right along trying to keep everyone in shape, hoping that when the grass comes that the calves will keep right on growing, and that our cows will be in good enough shape to cycle and breed back when we put the bulls out next month.

All very subjective. Working around slick roads elsewhere, we fed the girls above a day early yesterday as we drug our road up into Greasy Creek to fill in some of the gullies and ruts accumulated after the past two years of not enough moisture to effectively smooth them out. And good that we brought a little extra hay, as the calves were as glad to see us as the cows.

 

POLITICAL LANDSCAPE

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Now soft in places, red clay slick
feeding cows in the brown
bare flats beneath naked hills

loose piles of last year’s alfalfa,
each dry flake spaced to fall
into small green haystacks

where cows camp in an undulating
line within a cloudy chill
until this promise of grass

changes the color of everything
we have known for too long.
Looking down, plodding still,

eyes occupied with searching for
the first cotyledons to break free
from the crust, glad hands open

to the elements believing in more
good rains. Vote for those who know
growth without water won’t work.

 

FOREVER WORN

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Dark brown and naked after rain,
these hills have held together
despite their deep dust and our fears

after years of drought. Impossibly,
we even see a tinge of green
before the clouds clear the ridges.

Come alive and breathing, ready
to raise lush leaf and grass, they will
never be the same again in our eyes!

Nor we, forever worn by lack of moisture
on this earth and all across our minds—
growing closer and more grateful.