Category Archives: Photographs

BABY BLUE EYES

Posted on March 7, 2026 by | 1 comment

My mother’s favorite,
first of the season,
a family in the same bed

across the creek all these years,
she mentioned fondly
when I was a boy.

Photo: March 24, 2009

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Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal, poetry, Poems 2026

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SPRINGING

Posted on February 23, 2026 by | Leave a comment

The sycamores are pushing leaves
against green hillsides along the creek—
thin clouds smeared upon blue seas
above fresh snow upstream, and we

old timers wait for the wildflowers
we remember, their names and faces
begging for a moment in the sun
far from the news in Washington.

Thank God it finally rained after months
of fog, the only moisture to keep the grass
alive, and only now does it start to grow
after the frost and freezing mornings

that make strong feed. You can see it piled
behind the heifers, instead of puddles,
licking themselves as if their coats
were combed with gobs of Brylcreem.

It’s the little things that tell the story
I’m looking for—Baby Blue Eyes,
Mariposa Lillies and Pretty Faces
to greet me spring mornings.

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2026, poetry, Ranch Journal

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NATIVE HARMONIES: ranch poems

Available from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=native+harmonies+dofflemyer

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Posted on January 20, 2026 by in Photographs

Iron Roper

Posted on January 18, 2026 by | 1 comment

We branded another bunch on the calf table yesterday, labeled by longtime neighbor Earl McKee as the “Iron Roper”.


The transition from heading and heeling our calves has been smooth, giving us the advantage of branding on short notice as opposed to inviting ropers days in advance during a busy branding season. Though not as much fun, we can get the job done quicker and with less people. We also think it’s easier on the calves not being drug across the corral waiting to be heeled, and keeping the bull calves off the ground while being castrated is also more sanitary.

In any event, it’s also easier on us and our close neighbors, but each to his own, we’ve been there.

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EARLY ON

Posted on January 4, 2026 by | 1 comment

Once they get their legs to travel
and explore apart from mother,
left at the babysitter’s with fresh

calf licked clean asleep, they center
at the water trough waiting for the udder
off grazing to return. Every morning’s

‘buck and run’, opposing blind sprints
before they learn how to stop
only to circle back to where they began.

Always the stealer, head marked with manure,
waiting for the young cow’s calf to suck
before approaching from the rear—

a dance of patience and insistence
in a great green ballroom that becomes them—
it takes a herd to raise a calf.

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ALONG FOR THE RIDE

Posted on January 2, 2026 by | Leave a comment

Damn-near naked now
after good rains
without a frost
by New Years,
fleeting autumn colors
gone drab brown
before undressing.

Each twig stripped
of new growth leaves,
water pumped
into veins to see
if these fine lines
survive—and we
along for the ride.

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Merry Christmas

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Posted on December 25, 2025 by in Photographs, Ranch Journal

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Christmas Sunshine

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Posted on December 22, 2025 by in Photographs, Ranch Journal

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FOR LEONARD

Posted on December 16, 2025 by | 1 comment 
	We ride away from each other, waving our hands,
	While our horses neigh softly, softly . . .
		Li Po (“Taking Leave of a Friend”)

No Luddite sure, yet technology’s unwanted intrusion 
reminds of the woodpecker’s rapid-fire assault 
on the eave, on the metal roof, on the  smudge pot lids

closed cold in the orchard when I was a boy.  I wonder
about their rattled minds, what natural shock absorbers
slide like hydraulic cylinders between bill and brain

to cushion their rat-tat-tat attacks on the world.
Our push button culture saves jillions of steps 
that leave invisible trails nonetheless, for invaders 

we don’t want to see, don’t care about— yet 
tech has allowed me to know you and Chinese poetry
from half-way ‘round this distressed planet.

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Posted in Photographs, Poems 2025, poetry

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“Tule Stratus”

Posted on December 15, 2025 by | 2 comments

I am amused with the new vocabulary of weathermen like “hydroclimate whiplash” during the atmospheric rivers a couple of years ago. I just read a new one, we’re on day 21 of our “tule stratus” as we head to Paregien’s to gather for Wednesday’s branding where hopefully we’ll be above the fog.

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