Author Archives: John

WHEN IT WAS WESTERN

Posted on September 19, 2025 | 1 comment

Corrals were different then,
fences sagged, gates dragged,
old chiefs gruff and crude—

and if related, so profane 
that only eagles watched 
from the tops of twin 

Valley Oaks four foot thick.
My father brought his talk
as bait from the Bulge,

disconnected from command
for a week—and the high-headed 
cows gathered by too many 

wannabes out of the brush 
and narrow canyons,
reason to increase his volume.

I learned the language early,
shared it with my town friends 
on the grammar school playground.

1 Comment

Posted in Poems 2025, poetry

Tagged father/son, old west lingo, poetry

TWO POEMS: SUMMER AND FALL 2025

Posted on September 10, 2025 | Leave a comment

SUMMER 2025

July mornings warm between the granite
and clay baked canyon walls that soon 
in August will be too hot to work within

past 9 o’clock’s blazing sun when waterholes 
and springs evaporate, leaving only bleached
moss blankets to cover the turtles and frogs.

California’s foothill news much the same 
as 10,000 years ago before we came, July’s 
truth no one can change—no executive orders

to distort or rescind, nor histories to rewrite.
No children to let die, no officials to blame.
No houses yet to plant in the San Joaquin.


SEPTMEBER 2025

September dew portends
an early fall, damp
upon the solar panels

gleams before dawn—
expectant heifers waddle
to water, more solitary

in their plodding,
bellies big as barrels,
to graze alone.

A Nuthatch at the water
from the garden misters
collected in an empty dish

but makes room for finches,
sparrows and twohees
fidgeting in line

while I drink coffee
and steal a forbidden smoke 
one more time.

ODD PERSPECTIVE

Posted on September 9, 2025 | 2 comments

Photo: Allie Fox

It’s that time of year when the cows begin calving, and these two girls were in the bottom of a Ridenhour Canyon when Allie, her sister Katie and the two 1 year-old boys, Asher and Hayes, passed by on the way to check water in Paregien’s. Robbin and I have been checking the first and second calf heifers after they’re fed… and yes, we’re feeding hay too, having just increased the amount to keep up their strength before they calve. We have a few on the ground already, coyotes thick as fleas on a ground squirrel. It’s always exciting, and sometimes disappointing when you lose one.

Naturally, we love this time of year, especially now that the temperature is running in the 90s. It’s our beginning of the year.

2 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal

Tagged Calving, feeding, New Year, photography, Ridenhour Canyon

1st Calf 2025

Posted on August 29, 2025 | 2 comments

As we’ve done every year, we’re recording our first calf of the season here to substantiate of our Age and Source verification for the USDA. Tag # 3362 is now a second calf heifer.

I’ve let the blog slip by with little or no posts lately while I’ve been working on a new collection of poetry, “Native Harmonies; ranch poems”. It’s been a stop and go project for the past year that I’ve pared down to about 90 poems now. Sean Sexton offered one of his paintings that he exhibited at 2025 National Poetry Gathering in Elko for the cover. Here’s my mock up:

It’s been a mild summer as the days are now getting shorter and cooler. Big Wind last week had me moving vehicles out from under trees, gale force winds Saturday while Phoenix was also getting blown away. Influenced by monsoon activity, August is our month for thunderstorms, lightning and wildfires. Looking forward to fall, and a chance for rain.

2 Comments

Posted in Photographs, poetry, Ranch Journal

Tagged 1st Calf 2025, photography, poetry, weather

FULL STURGEON MOON

Posted on August 9, 2025 | Leave a comment

Too bright to sleep
or wrestle with dreams
with a full Sturgeon hole
rising from the ridgeline
into the night sky

like a gigantic galactic leak
upon us, for all the UFOs
and UAPs to pass through,
for all the excuses we need
to behave like lunatics.

MY RIVER

Posted on July 27, 2025 | 3 comments

runs over boulders,
spills and spumes
into deep green pools

or into cutbanks
exposing roots
hiding rainbow trout

beneath a dogwood’s
white blooming
I can’t let go.

Overgrown, no room
for a kid to cast
a deer hair fly—

fresh flow of time
behind me now
I go there yet

without thinking,
without yearning,
with nothing more

than feeling
the untamed current
still run through me.

3 Comments

Posted in Haiku 2025, Photographs, Poems 2025

Tagged photography, poetry, rivers

Cowboy Poetry Gatherings

Posted on July 26, 2025 | Leave a comment

I haven’t the technological expertise to offer Amy Hale’s exceptional Substack post for the kind of attention it deserves, but please take the time read it via this link:

https://amymariehale.substack.com/p/cowboy-poetry-gatherings?r=4a25vl&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true

Amy Hale photos

Sea Chest Oyster Bar

Posted on July 20, 2025 | 5 comments

Whether poetry or prose, it’s been difficult to post to the blog under the current political atmosphere of chaos and confusion that has become addicting for those of us who are still hoping to ferret out the truth. Though adding to the whole mess with more political poems is difficult to resist, with few facts, they are seldom enlightening. Like so many other people, we’ve not only sought ways to wean ourselves from the “latest”, but celebrate the positive with the many uplifting alternatives that surround us, reminders of the joy and grace that plays out before our eyes if we keep them open.

We shipped our last load of calves in the middle of May, and since selected our replacement heifers that will get their Brucellosis vaccinations on Wednesday. We will start supplementing them and our 1st and 2nd calf heifers soon thereafter as we prepare them to calve in September. Our carrot has been the 50th Anniversary of the Sea Chest Oyster Bar in Cambria (70 degrees). A month long celebration, we were in attendance for a couple of enjoyable nights.

Back home to 100+ degrees:

The distant hawk’s bare branch at dawn
awaits fuzzy-headed movement
to fall like an arrow fledged with patience.

The sun crawls across the flats
without a sound, wild oats bent
like blond hair combed into the light.

Shadows stretch beneath hillside oaks
into the puddled creek where an egret
goes fishing before breakfast.