Cleaning houses
in the high-rent district
has certain advantages.
Cleaning houses
in the high-rent district
has certain advantages.
Posted in Haiku 2015, Photographs
Tagged Greasy Creek, haiku, photographs, poetry, purple chinese houses, wildflowers
No need to go to outer space
to touch the stars
sparkling at our feet.
Posted in Haiku 2015, Photographs
Tagged haiku, photographs, poetry, Sierra Man-root, Wild Cucumber, wildflowers
It was good to see the historic Mizpah Hotel open for business again in Tonopah, Nevada when we passed through Sunday on our way to Elko. Traffic was light across the Great Basin, as we only met 74 cars between Tonopah and Carlin, some 250 miles.
Posted in Photographs
Tagged Elko Nevada, Mizpah, National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, photographs, poetry, Tonopah Nevada
If we all lean in the same direction
maybe we can change
the world.
Posted in Haiku 2015, Photographs
Tagged Dry Creek, Phacelia, photographs, poetry, Scorpionweed, wildflowers
I’ll be thinking of my friend Jack this coming week in Elko, Nevada, one of the first hands I shook at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in 1989, as we waited to get our schedule of sessions, poetry and song. I had to introduce myself, having watched him perform at the Ashgrove many times in the late 60s. Our direct link to Woody Guthrie and the pure heart of the working man, he’s been magically expressing himself on stage for over 60 years.
Late to the party
in the thick of spring—
just chasing space and sunlight.
Posted in Haiku 2015, Photographs
Tagged Greasy Creek, haiku, photographs, poetry, Twining Brodeaia, wildflowers
On the edge of where I’ve been
a vaster world waits
for me to arrive.
Posted in Haiku 2015, Photographs
Tagged flower-friday, Greasy Creek, haiku, photographs, poetry, Sierra Tidy Tips, wildflowers
After rain in spring, I see my father
standing among a half-dozen others
atop fresh mounds of dirt, hear him
praise the Great Blue Heron as the best
‘gopher-getter around’. As the creek
warms, he glides up canyon early,
spends his days wading shallows,
coasting home in the gloaming.
Punctual, you could set your watch
by his circles to work each day,
depending on season and crop.
When it all mattered too much,
he’d slip up the road to check
the feed and fences, the condition
of my cows grazing with his herons.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015
Tagged birds, Calves, cows, Dry Creek, father, Great Blue Heron, photographs, poetry, water, weather, wildlife
Posted in Haiku 2015, Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged Drought, Dry Creek, haiku, photographs, poetry, rain, red sky, signs, weather
How easily she could say,
‘it’s all in your mind—’
deny, dismiss what she knew
could be true, if we let it
when we were children
pretending to be grown up—
playing games
with our imaginations,
mornings drumming music
on eucalyptus roots
before the school bus stopped
our spontaneous chants.
With rusty tools and sticks,
horse drawn relics
and Model T wrecks
we took off for town—
took turns driving
wild steeds or hot rod cars
depending on time—just
as much as we wanted
to get there.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2015
Tagged Coast Range, Elderwood, imagination, Paregien Ranch, photographs, poetry, San Joaquin Valley, Serenity, weekly-photo-challenge