For grass and cattle, we pray
for rain until the draws run
with tree frogs in January –
until hills leak and release
rocks imprisoned in their clay
for more than centuries.
When gray heavens hover lower
and press heavily upon our minds,
engulf us all in cloud and fog
for a month, we pray for sun
until wildflowers come, now afraid
of an early spring in February.
Forecasts vary, prophets proliferate,
everyman a soothsayer, we pray now
for time to get the work done.
Posted in Photographs
Jody Fuller
© 2011 Dry Crik Journal
A beautiful, spring-like day around 70 degrees, Robbin & I had a ball taking over 500 photos between us. Nice calves, good people – reminding us how lucky we truly are.
Posted in Photographs
Smell of salt upon the sand,
endless stream of pelicans
tracing waves, translucent
blues and greens returned
from golden times, as we
absorbed the sun, charged
the naked flesh, strangers
off the gravel road
to San Quintin in the 60s –
when there were no signs
of people, except for you
and I – philosophizing,
boiling it all down
to a native awareness
we hoped to cultivate.
– for Peter Forsch
It’s still a funny world of mostly men
among men in front of women, old
bulls with half-bowed necks, that
awkward uncertainty searching for
a postured cure, a familiar stance –
we give them space, let little voices
from unruly classrooms fade as if
not listening, as if nothing was said,
hoping an echo rings in their heads.
Pawed dirt with bellow and bluster,
some wear bald spots on thick skulls,
spar for hours in a pasture of cows –
yet the unemployed, when sequestered
together, can harmonize their grumbling
from the comfort of distant shade trees.
Posted in Poems 2011
The scene opens around a fire,
shadows of huddled men dancing
to white coals stirred for another chunk
of tamarack, bell mare grazing
distant darkness by granite starlight,
sweet and damp in her nostrils,
to the snowmelt’s murmur
leaking down into another world.
You are there among them now,
young and listening in thin night air,
following a herd of horses from
Cuyama up the Kern, over Farewell
to the miners in Mineral King
by yourself at seventeen – Onus Brown.
If lucky, you may be a story only,
a far-fetched tale of discarded truth –
short chapters of wild accomplishment
that will not matter in the future,
but for the embellished retelling.
The camera zooms into eyes a glint
beneath your brim, cigarette inhaled,
jug tipped, passed and burning still –
nothing worse among these men,
than to have nothing left to tell.
Posted in Poems 2011
Robbin and I are finally home from Elko, taking the two-day, long way across the Great Basin to reflect and recuperate from too much fun with old and new friends – the special reunion that the Gathering has become beneath the multifaceted offerings on its many venues. When I first arrived in 1989, it was pretty much traditional recitations with very little contemporary expression – half-dozen books for sale – but there was an amazing ‘lost and found’ camaraderie that inspired us all and sparked similar gatherings all around a disjointed, cowboy West of those days.
Mediums of contemporary expression are as varied as technology will allow today, going well-beyond its poetic beginnings, an explosion of all kinds of art, music and video as Cowboy Poetry has evolved, trying, I think, to offer and reaffirm an ethic common to us all, apart from the uneasy business of media hysterics. Breakfast with the Hungarians Monday morning, before the Gathering got into full swing, confirmed to us that this ethic is not limited to the American West, or to the U.S., as we discussed the details of annual and perennial grasses via Agnes Kemecsei, the translator. Jammed around a table in a corner of the Stockman’s coffee shop, the air was thick – and I was reminded of that camaraderie back in 1989, that shared feeling of finding others whose livelihoods depended on grass, who also took care of livestock. It was a wonderful beginning to the Gathering for us.
The rest is, of course, a blur with too little sleep – serendipitous highlights and diversions – ample inspiration for another year to be sure.
Posted in Photographs
Tagged Elko, National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, NCPG, Western Folklife Center
Robbin and I are both relieved and pleased to have another bunch branded, thanks to our friends and neighbors. The cows and calves that we held in the Gathering Field in Greasy since last Thursday were branded on Monday, allowing us time to make sure we cleaned the pasture, plus help Tony Rabb brand his calves last Sunday. But too much time for the bulls, we arrived to fix fence before we started. The minor mix-ups and overcast day did not impair an efficient slow dance of only two ropers in the pen, bloomy calves stretched one at a time. Apart from the world down the hill, the low fog seemed to enhance this intimate and private spot at Earl McKee’s corrals.
Bob, Robbin, and I thank Clarence and Frances, Tony, Kenny and Virginia, Jody and young Sam, and especially the willingness of welcome youth – Spencer, Zach and Douglas – to go at our speed. It was a special day!
Posted in Photographs
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