Author Archives: John

The jokes come snowmelt easy,
off the Rubies, cloudy runoff rising
down the South Fork as we grin
into wind gusts like pickup pups,
slit-eyes watering in a light rain.

                  I haven’t time to trace
                  how I found my way
                  to this strange country –
                  under sea undulations
                  with dirt road ruts
                  forking in the thatches
                  of willows swelling with bud,
                  where naked cottonwoods play
                  dead along the bottoms
                  of the high desert in May.

A quick language of quips, unrefined
and unfinished sentences sprinkled
with double-entendres, flashing eyes
locking, laughing just long enough
to chase the cold river downstream.

No longer lean boys looking for adventure,
we raise families to respect fate, to find
their rhythm on any landscape, to learn
our gods have no bounds, sympathetic
most to those who do for themselves.

It could be foreign gibberish, a lost
native tongue, stirring coals, throwing
sticks upon the fire between us – that
rare communion of common souls
where almost Anyman can be a comedian.

                                      for Tom, Sharon & Travis

Mid-May, the hillside cut beside the house
leaks a stream, fractured granite patient,
a steep tumble of broken stones frozen

in clay, hanging for a hundred yards to
the top of the ridge where water springs
from hydraulic pressure into fissures

of magma cooled too fast to crack and
connect the Kaweahs, loaded with snow.
How long have they waited, what pebble

slipped to stem full flow, how wet the year
they last moved? Dismissed wonders pale
upon the whole, an army of ants controlled

by queens we serve. They are sexy and
delightful, stirring dreams of magic
and luxury come to power, all the flags

and colored bunting of Camelot sans
chivalry. This perfect world at war
with itself will never be the same.

Beyond the window on the hillside up
between the dark green oaks at dawn,
a patch of blond dry feed – grasses

bent to a breeze before the storm.
Even the empty heads of wild oats
are heavy beneath a gray sky in May

and I can trace the well-coiffed track
of a comb from a quarter mile away –
that seemingly untouched perfection

where forty cows have grazed, that
last arch old grasses reach before a rain
lays them down to mat and mold

where I thought I saw two black cows,
calves somewhere else behind a tree,
two dark shapes that have disappeared

now that I’ve leapt there, focused in detail,
and remembering: we gathered them all,
the last pair trailing-in along the fence

tracking her friends, looking for company
other than her calf ready to be weaned –
slightly wild-eyed, suddenly suspicious

of a change in needs, almost completely
self-sufficient, living off the land,
almost perfect if she were a wild thing.

We play a game we don’t like,
switch hats to become feedlot boys –
get afoot in the corral once the cows
are parted. Clang! Bang! steel
upon steel crowding flesh, fat calves
channeled head to tail as the chute
ratchets another neck for vaccine
guns, ID tags, fly control and
anything else – we see ourselves
as children, the first days jammed
in school, every muscle hard,
eyes wild – some hurt themselves
and we hate it, hate authority
and all the economic rules that say
we must to stay a horseback.

I look into the big pen, pause
to meet anxious faces of mothers
waiting for their first born
to leave the clatter of confinement,
gathered in the early cool before
breakfast, paired sides already pressed,
nurse warm milk. They are forgiving
and some forget quicker than others –
some more sensitive than we. But
we have acquiesced, become a cog
in a corporate machine, guilty
in our own eyes, in the eyes of all
the old cowboys who never packed
fencing pliers or a pipe wrench,
guilty in the eyes of those we feed.

                        Forgive the hymn, friend. Out of doors
                        it doesn’t count as praying.
                                     – Quinton Duval (“One Bright Morning”)

It may be hours before a word escapes
my mouth across the creek, through
half-a-dozen gates latched behind me

like pairs of quail disturbed for a moment –
over snake tracks and caravans of ants
beneath the inquisitive wing of a Red Tail.

Suddenly, I hear my voice come from
the outside in, a gravelly phrase added
to conclude the conversation in my head.

I have to laugh at my reply in the same voice
before one of us cuts it short – like making
ugly faces, it could be habit forming,

so addictive that I might forever stay
praying like crazy in the wilderness,
talking to cattle and animals, to twisted

trees, perfect springs, ever-seeping – all
who say lots of things these days, as if they
knew something – and someone’s got to listen.