Category Archives: Photographs

Chimney swept,
woodstove cleaned,
we head uphill for Manzanita
just in case it rains, take hay
for girls we’ll meet along the way.

The old timers said
it took one year for the snowmelt
to get here underground
filling fissures and granite cracks
to springs and water troughs.

Fears now dispelled
with a bumper crop of squirrels
in spring, feed so short by fall
they become easy-pickings
to a bumper crop of hawks.

Dry ground as hard
as billy-hell, granite flakes
and clay, no matter how
much it rains
it won’t wash away.

We are temporary obstacles
for the birds, interrupting good times
and private conversations in the garden
wild, overgrown with weeds—

the only cover with water for miles,
coveys of quail titter and congregate,
preach the perils of Cooper’s Hawks
and housecats to flee on wheels
in a gray whir that startles the heart.
We serve feasts to Black Phoebes waiting,
low branch to porch chair. Roadrunners,
like government employees, come
and go as they please as if we weren’t here—
terrorize both Monarchs and snails
while we entertain woodpeckers
beneath the only oak with acorns
this dry year, a host of town pigeons
in the horse barn, we cheer the visiting
Peregrines in the dead snag. The Crow pair,
lovebird silhouettes nuzzling at the water trough
come evening, fly-by close to enough
to judge how much longer we will last.

Most birds don’t care much long. We
won’t be missed until we’re gone.

Barn Owl