Author Archives: John

Cows and calves are soft
and in the shade by eight,
now that the oaks have leaves—

flat ceilings pruned above
their jumbled silhouettes,
black patches easy to miss

across the empty, short-cropped
field of foxtails turned
a perfect biscuit brown

measured with our eyes
against the coming summer
and distant fall before it might

ever rain, be green again.
They worry not—all
the heavy dread is mine.

                                        Easy, but hungry.
                                             – James Galvin (“What Holds Them Apart”)

Perhaps the rodents first
showed us how to store wild grain,
woodpeckers: tools to improve.

Our larders volunteered
and we became farmers,
builders of things.

The hawk has it on easy-glide
parting grass with his eyes—
like a satellite in space, spying.

Or like sea gulls trailing fishing boats,
a flock of blackbirds rising and falling
around a boy breaking clods

behind the tractor and earth turned
in the vineyard—I wondered
how they knew, how they learned

to follow in the wake of progress,
of our proclaimed genius—
it was easy in those days.

                                                                                                    This town
                                                  is mine, and even out of the corner
                                                  of my eye, everything is in place
                                                  for me here at the edge, one man
                                                  rising and falling with the tide.
                                                                    – Quinton Duval (“III. Mariner”)

1.

She dictates the order of things now,
the imperatives of season, the slope
of earth and sun in circles over time

we follow—a plodding slow dance
that she allows as one last quest for grace
among cattle, grass and water—

you and I, silhouettes at the trough,
as a pair of crows discussing plans
and what we’ve done, each evening.

Time is nothing, no urgency exists
and contrary to my father’s
Thirteenth Beatitude: Blessed are

the slow afoot, for they shall never
get anyplace—we    are    home.
The meadowlark will sing at the gate,

the young bred cows will watch me
move water on the pasture
and we will make repairs along the way.

2.

We know her habits,
love to ride the swells of wet times
so we can dream of them
when she is dry:

Hand in hand we met the creek
pushing a raft of leaves—
we cried out like children
as raindrops streaked your cheek.

We may own the ground
she visits, clean house
and make her our mistress,
but we cannot make her stay.

We clean her house, fix fence
and water, make garden beds
full, just as if she were here
to hold us together.

3.

Roadrunners,
gophers and snakes choose
to live with us, and it’s easy
to tell who is who
when the quail pair-up,
break from the covey
to nest and raise babies.

Little man stands sentry
or prances goose-step,
breast out, top-knot bobbing
while she’s busy looking
in bushes and rocks.

On the porch,
down the steps
into the garden,
it takes days for her
to make up her mind
a twitter with the pros and cons
of all things domestic.

As knees creak before dawn,
I remember, calculate
nearly a quarter of a million bales
on and off a pickup—but
two hundred and fifty
truck and trailer loads
doesn’t sound like much
for a lifetime
of feeding cows
when as many claim
Highway 99 in a day.

Thirty bucks a ton for good,
clean hay when I started—
strong as a bull, mind free
to press the wire,
be anything I wanted.

First few bare steps
to make coffee,
I replay yesterday’s
slow circle, measure
each accomplishment
to lean forward
into today.