Author Archives: John

With no puddles or streams
to wade, the Great Blue Herons
frozen in pastures wait

for movement of earth like
sentries over gopher mounds
all summer long. A Harris’s Hawk

claims a rock among a million
cow chips daring a squirrel
to make a living outside

his burrow. Everyone grounded,
we crave ascension—to leave
in a haze or rise with the dust.

Like poetry over whiskey, neighbors
in from feeding, first day of two-fourteen,
glasses raised to the native cows and daughters

we prize in hard times. Another language
where words roll near the edge of vulgarity
and descriptive gerundives ricochet around

the kitchen like ice rattling our empty glasses.
But always the allusion of something more
that holds us to this ground, this watershed

we can’t shake, yet celebrate daily
for as long as we can. Crass and basic lines
I try to remember, steal for a poem

in the morning—always another way
of looking—seeing that it is
no small miracle, this earth adapting.

                                                            for Craig and Ronnelle

Some reason we
believe

moves and dangles
beyond dry leaves
clinging

into the new year,
this side of the Kaweahs
baring granite teeth—

some logic yet
to focus clearly,
every soul hungry

hunting something
to fill their bellies.
An urgency

in fragile air before
the haze and dust—
a quickening

to our plodding
like old horses
headed home.

What star has fallen
from dark heavens, what
holds the clouds back?

Some reason we
remain to see.

Golden hours before the haze
rises from the Valley, all shades
of yellow and brown without green

blaze beneath a deep blue,
cloudless sky—old horses hesitate
to notice, find remarkable, shuffling

the same words day after day.
No one listens to the forecast
over coffee anymore. Dusty hills

wait for a plan. You suggest
we brand some calves—best chance
we’ve ever had to bring a rain.