Category Archives: Photographs

LIVING ON ROCK—2 HAIKU

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With rain, even lichen
and moss vie for space—
breathe life into a rock.

 

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Hide of a Herford calf
at a distance—red
lichen living on rock.

 

 

WPC – Threshold (2)

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From the embrace of shade,
shelter from the elements,
we watch the world.

 

 

WPC – Threshold (1)

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Dark portal reserved for spring
without an address
or need for a door.

 

 

DUST

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                                        “We may be living on an atom
                                        in somebody’s wallpaper.”

                                                    – Wendell Berry (“Dust”)

1.
Between worlds, the sun leaked through
the shingles of Granddad’s dark shed
where the pixie dust would dance, sparkle

within light beams, as my sister and I
urged invisible steeds to town adventures—
fly aboard the manure spreader stored

for the future, the iron wheels and idle
wagon tongue would wait to take us
to wild dimensions for young dreams.

2.
The friction wears us smooth and fine,
cobbles, sand and dust. In the dry years
midden rises under hoof on a gust,

generations lifted to cloud the light
that smell like deer hides and taste
like acorns—tiny planets inhaled

behind cattle drawn to gather here
to wait and see how serious we are
about leaving what feels like peace.

3.
Through a stained glass window high
above the hand-hewn beams in the adobe
Chapel atop the prep school’s hill,

the call of selflessness floated on motes
that framed the sermon, moving me
from the wooden pews filled with two

hundred other vacant blue blazers
into another world for a week or so, yet
clings still to particles that float in space.

 

 

‘Dust’

COWGIRL-UP

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                                                       To cowgirl-up is just
                                                       one more day to ride
                                                       to build another loop.

 

 

Between Rains

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Clear and crisp yesterday afternoon, I took a short walk down the driveway with the big lens towards the Prickly Pear cactus where the Roadrunners are nesting, wanting also to show you how the Filaree has come back in a week’s time after 1.38″ of rain. Growing again, it’s amazing feed! (Click to enlarge the thumbnails below.)

March 25, 2014

March 25, 2014

April 1, 2014

April 1, 2014

The Roadrunners share their Prickly Pear home with about a dozen Cottontail rabbits who delight in waiting until the last moment before moving to avoid a vehicle coming or leaving the house. They’re fairly tame, but it’s a rare Bobcat or Coyote that can catch one.

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Back at the house, the pair of Roadrunners were hunting snails in Robbin’s Irises.

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A beautiful day for fools, we never left home with plenty to see and do between rains.

ANNIVERSARY

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April fools making
promises on a pillow kept
for nineteen years.

 

 

GOING HOME

July 28, 2012

 

They know the way—
only need a cowboy to
open and close the gates.

 

 

(After weaning, July 28, 2012. Enlarge to see the silhouette of a cowboy in the dust.)

ON GOOD HORSES

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Looking between their ears
watching the business
on the ground stretched

and rolled for needles, knife
and iron, the mesmerizing
dance of humans ‘round

a calf to be turned back
into a jungle of Poison
Oak and Manzanita,

the impassable wilds
of Woolly Canyon
it took four days to gather—

all done in an instant.
Little progress here,
but no less futile

than punching a clock
where time is money
and the earth is flat.

 

 

McKee Branding – Woolly Canyon

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