They’ve taken Saturday’s rain away
with future promises
like plastic magic debt
no one intends to pay.
We’ve been here before,
crooning to godesses
not to forget us
like the hopeless homeless.
We are this ground
rooted into the future
like the plodding lives of cattle,
trusting, trusting, trusting….
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2022, Ranch Journal
Tagged cattle, Cosmos, Drought, godesses, Monarch Butterfly, photography, poetry, rain, trusting, weather
1.
Gray dust clouds rising
behind cows down powdered trails
off these bare mountains.
2.
The diesel feed truck
awakes a bawling chorus
to claim the canyon.
3.
All imperative
and hungry, it twists our guts—
La Niña pending.
Posted in Haiku 2022, Photographs, Poems 2022, Ranch Journal
Tagged cattle, Drought, haiku, La Nina, photography, poetry, water, weather
Posted in Photographs
Change is made of choices
& choices are made of character.
– Amanda Gorman (“We Write”)
Nothing stays the same,
even the Earth wobbles on its axis.
We are not the same people—
we were raised with, and finally by.
Reason and truth have been inflated so
they have no value now, like fiat currency.
Yesterday, a man’s word defined him.
Today he speaks a foreign tongue.
But that’s all we have, a lifetime of words
to ease the speed and pain of change.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2022
Tagged Amanda Gorman, change, character, photography, poetry, reason, truth, words
Up here, the deer unafraid.
We freeze together
to see who melts away first.
Posted in Haiku 2022, Photographs, Poems 2022
Tagged deer, haiku, photography, poetry, privacy
An all too familiar sight across the West, this spring and rainfall fed stockwater pond has gone dry. Rainfall for 3 of the past 4 years has been below average https://drycrikjournal.com/rainfall-history-1/ following the 2012-2016 drought. In short, for 7 of the past 10 years rainfall has been below average.
Though currently temperatures have been running above 110 degrees https://drycrikjournal.com/journal-2022-23/ our summer has been relatively cool with more monsoonal presence than we’re used to, but without moisture. Typically, it’s too warm for our grass to survive before the middle of October anyway.
As new calves hit the ground, we’re looking forward to fall and a chance for moisture and feed for the remainder of our cattle.
Posted in Photographs
Occasionally, I feel guilty.
I’ve killed so many
that I may allow
one to escape
my will to kill
before becoming numb
as machinery,
before squeezing
the pellet gun
the .22,
the .223
or the 17 HMR—
…like now as I write:
one breaking from
the dogs’ empty pens
with cheeks full
of puppy chow.
Little bastards,
I’ve fed tens of thousands
to our local wake of buzzards
waiting for the first report
of war in the canyon.
Falling off hillsides in hordes,
battalions of vermin
to strip tomatoes
green from the vine—
every sweet and juicy issue
from my darling Elberta,
our plump grapefruit
and leather-hided pomegranates
that will never spread
as jelly on toasted bread.
Serious business in a drought
to become an oasis
for the flea-infested
and their underpopulated
predators, but I’d like a day off.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2022, Ranch Journal
Tagged buzzards, gardens, ground squirrels, guilt, killing, orchards, vermin, war
In the feed grounds this morning (8/29/22), our first calf of the season with its mother (7052), posted here as part of our age and source verification program and to share with those following this blog. Due September 1st, there are several other cows pretty close up, so it’ll have a playmate soon. An Angus calf, no Wagyu this year.
What a delightful afternoon after work (8/19/22). 109 degrees at the ‘Sip and Dip’: Katy Fry, Allie & Shawn Fox with Robbin, Buster and Tessa.
I look to the ridges for clarity,
for a sign of an approaching storm
gathering somewhere north—
trace silhouetted skeletons
of drought-killed oaks, branched
like Challenge Butter bucks.
As my eyes escape the first waft
of chaos and claustrophobe,
I leave my flesh to rest among
all the old cowmen with nothing to do
but watch the learning process
over and over again.
The Natives retreated to the hills,
but at the top of mountain peaks,
there’s no place left to go.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2022
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