Author Archives: John

SUMMER COLOR

Posted on May 8, 2025 | Leave a comment


Look to the rockpiles,

Monkeyflowers on display

to remind of spring.

BLACKBIRDS

Posted on May 7, 2025 | 1 comment

A blackbird perched on a rusted railing with a rustic background.

Like fighter jets after hawks,
they nose dive the dog,
attack from redwood boughs
to protect a fledgling
too soon on the ground.

A community, a murder, a grind,
a merle or murmuration
of blackbirds has moved-in,
displaced the finches’
crimson dance upon the rail

with cocky walks and orgies
of foreplay and flittering sex
anywhere they please—but ready
to herd a rattlesnake
out of the garden and barnyard.

1 Comment

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2025, poetry, Ranch Journal

Tagged Brewer's Blackbird, collective nouns, Dry Creek, photography, poetry

APRIL FIRST

Posted on May 6, 2025 | 7 comments

The birds are pairing up
as crimson-chested finches
dance and sing upon the railing,

beak-to-beak foreplay,
wing feathers quivering
before making a home

as house-hunting quail
split from their covey
to explore the garden.

A flock of strutting blackbirds
gets acquainted
while combing the ground,

and the killdeer practice
hollowing nests
in the gravel drive

analyzing traffic
before settling down
to hatch four eggs.

7 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2025, poetry, Ranch Journal

Tagged Blackbirds, House Finches, Killdeer, quail, spring

INTO FRESNO

Posted on May 2, 2025 | 4 comments

              We ride all day 'till the sun's going down
              I'm gonna be glad to get out of this town.
	           - Charley Willis (“Goodbye Old Paint”)

Into Fresno for the first time in years
to carve cancer off my face

                with the cars and trucks, all makes, 
                all sides, both ways, packed parking, 
                debt-ridden drivers cooped-up 
                in caves and castles busy being 
                where there is no place 
                without more of the same 
                for miles

                and I’m scared—
not of the knife, nor of the scar—
but way too tight for my old heart.

It is a race now, but slowing near the finish line—
time to identify new wildflowers, measure rain
for posterity, data to apply to reason, to a pattern
for those of us who believe not everything is random

chaos, turbulence and tornadoes inside the Capitol
of the planet where the big guns make money
playing chicken, or blind man’s bluff 
for the rest of the resources we’ve about used-up

especially space without trace or track
of humankind—

                 the dogwood creek’s short cast 
                 for snowmelt rainbows where 
                 even a child would not go hungry.

I can go back anytime I want 
to escape or wait 
until the job’s done.

4 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Poems 2025, poetry

Tagged "Goodbye Old Paint", Charley Willis, poetry, politics, progress, Tex Ritter

FIREBREAKS

Posted on April 19, 2025 | Leave a comment

Blading the season’s last green grass
for firebreaks, I need to concentrate
far away from the world’s turmoil,

peel the weeds out of the soil
or sever their roots, over and over
the same ground until smooth—

an impatient perfectionist,
carving a twelve foot road
the cattle will travel and dimple

like a golf ball, but will stop fire
if not too windy to ignite
wild oats and tall dry feed

easier than I can throttle back
the flow of pompous rhetoric
that has ignited global animosity.

GOLDEN EAR-DROPS

Posted on April 18, 2025 | Leave a comment

Dicentra chrysantha, Woolley Canyon April 12, 2025

A wonderful day for Robbin and me touring Woolley Canyon with Chuck and Lesley Fry where Virginia and Ken Mckee run their cows and calves. Though wild and rough (it takes a week to gather), it’s the most diverse piece of ground, ranging upwards to 3,600 feet, I’ve ever seen. Lots of wildflowers new to me:

Indian Pink (Silene californica)

Indian Warrior (Pedicularis densiflora)

8 Comments

Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal, Wildlfowers

Tagged Indian Pink, Indian Warrior, wildflowers, Woolley Canyon

DEAR CONGRESSMAN

Posted on April 3, 2025 | 11 comments

Out here in the California heartland
beyond the peeling billboards
that once announced
every fruit and vegetable
capital of the world
removed from Highway 99,
swapping crops
for air conditioned shopping malls –
neutered Valley towns
given-up their figs
to farm people instead,
I can’t tell Turlock from Modesto.

Out here between the furrows where
every Mom and Pop grocery store,
fruit stand, bar, bait and tackle shop
under one flat roof is boarded-up,
old gas pumps frozen
like soldiers from the Fifties
waiting for a windshield
or dip-stick to check
or if the kids are over
the mumps or chicken pox yet.

And Congressman,
I know we can’t go back –
that the rest of you must
have great big plans
we can’t comprehend,
that you all have your own dream
of what you can do with the harvest:
your ledger of plastic magic debts –
but what happens
when the tree grows
too far from its roots?

We are the tendrils
burrowing in the dirt where
what little water left
is pumped into food
we can’t sell at a profit
anymore
and I was wondering
how do we fit your vision
of the new millennium?
How are you going to keep us
producing
like numb milk cows to stanchions
without kicking down
with a little more cash
or bigger rations?

Or have you dealt us out
for some fresh field workers
not yet addicted to
electricity or TV,
never driven a tractor or new car
or had to pay
license and insurance yet
with nothing to lose
but their innocence?

Dear Congressman,
I couldn’t sleep again tonight
trying to figure how it’s going to work
and thought I’d write and ask you
before
I invest another decade in the soil:
how in the hell can we stay
to pay the bills and still
subsidize your consumption?
You don’t need my vote
and not enough will hear
whatever good or bad I might say
about you to matter,
but I thought I’d ask
one human to another:
do you really have a plan?

Not much has changed. Written in 1998 and included in “Poems from Dry Creek” (Starhaven)