runs over boulders,
spills and spumes
into deep green pools
or into cutbanks
exposing roots
hiding rainbow trout
beneath a dogwood’s
white blooming
I can’t let go.
Overgrown, no room
for a kid to cast
a deer hair fly—
fresh flow of time
behind me now
I go there yet
without thinking,
without yearning,
with nothing more
than feeling
the untamed current
still run through me.
I haven’t the technological expertise to offer Amy Hale’s exceptional Substack post for the kind of attention it deserves, but please take the time read it via this link:
Amy Hale photos
Whether poetry or prose, it’s been difficult to post to the blog under the current political atmosphere of chaos and confusion that has become addicting for those of us who are still hoping to ferret out the truth. Though adding to the whole mess with more political poems is difficult to resist, with few facts, they are seldom enlightening. Like so many other people, we’ve not only sought ways to wean ourselves from the “latest”, but celebrate the positive with the many uplifting alternatives that surround us, reminders of the joy and grace that plays out before our eyes if we keep them open.
We shipped our last load of calves in the middle of May, and since selected our replacement heifers that will get their Brucellosis vaccinations on Wednesday. We will start supplementing them and our 1st and 2nd calf heifers soon thereafter as we prepare them to calve in September. Our carrot has been the 50th Anniversary of the Sea Chest Oyster Bar in Cambria (70 degrees). A month long celebration, we were in attendance for a couple of enjoyable nights.
Back home to 100+ degrees:
The distant hawk’s bare branch at dawn
awaits fuzzy-headed movement
to fall like an arrow fledged with patience.
The sun crawls across the flats
without a sound, wild oats bent
like blond hair combed into the light.
Shadows stretch beneath hillside oaks
into the puddled creek where an egret
goes fishing before breakfast.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2025, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged joy and grace, no politics, photography, poetry, Sea Chest Oyster Bar, writing
Lesley Fry found this thistle (Cirsium occidentale var. californicum) on our Paregien Ranch to add to our wildflower collection.
Summer heat intense enough
to forget the rainy days beyond
the blinding sheets of delirium
framed in flames. The trickle
of the creek shrinks each day
as young cows bring calves down
to shade and well-water
before we gather to wean—
first-calvers looking for relief,
yearning for those days of virginity,
of curious discovery free
from bovine responsibilities.
Never in this world the same,
yet no better mother than a cow—
Happy Mother’s Day!
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2025, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged cow, Mother's Day, photography, poetry, weather
Look to the rockpiles,
Monkeyflowers on display
to remind of spring.
Posted in Haiku 2025, Photographs, Poems 2025, poetry, Ranch Journal, Wildlfowers
Tagged Rock Monkeyflower
Like fighter jets after hawks,
they nose dive the dog,
attack from redwood boughs
to protect a fledgling
too soon on the ground.
A community, a murder, a grind,
a merle or murmuration
of blackbirds has moved-in,
displaced the finches’
crimson dance upon the rail
with cocky walks and orgies
of foreplay and flittering sex
anywhere they please—but ready
to herd a rattlesnake
out of the garden and barnyard.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2025, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged Brewer's Blackbird, collective nouns, Dry Creek, photography, poetry
The birds are pairing up
as crimson-chested finches
dance and sing upon the railing,
beak-to-beak foreplay,
wing feathers quivering
before making a home
as house-hunting quail
split from their covey
to explore the garden.
A flock of strutting blackbirds
gets acquainted
while combing the ground,
and the killdeer practice
hollowing nests
in the gravel drive
analyzing traffic
before settling down
to hatch four eggs.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2025, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged Blackbirds, House Finches, Killdeer, quail, spring
We ride all day 'till the sun's going down
I'm gonna be glad to get out of this town.
- Charley Willis (“Goodbye Old Paint”)
Into Fresno for the first time in years
to carve cancer off my face
with the cars and trucks, all makes,
all sides, both ways, packed parking,
debt-ridden drivers cooped-up
in caves and castles busy being
where there is no place
without more of the same
for miles
and I’m scared—
not of the knife, nor of the scar—
but way too tight for my old heart.
It is a race now, but slowing near the finish line—
time to identify new wildflowers, measure rain
for posterity, data to apply to reason, to a pattern
for those of us who believe not everything is random
chaos, turbulence and tornadoes inside the Capitol
of the planet where the big guns make money
playing chicken, or blind man’s bluff
for the rest of the resources we’ve about used-up
especially space without trace or track
of humankind—
the dogwood creek’s short cast
for snowmelt rainbows where
even a child would not go hungry.
I can go back anytime I want
to escape or wait
until the job’s done.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2025, poetry
Tagged "Goodbye Old Paint", Charley Willis, poetry, politics, progress, Tex Ritter
Blading the season’s last green grass
for firebreaks, I need to concentrate
far away from the world’s turmoil,
peel the weeds out of the soil
or sever their roots, over and over
the same ground until smooth—
an impatient perfectionist,
carving a twelve foot road
the cattle will travel and dimple
like a golf ball, but will stop fire
if not too windy to ignite
wild oats and tall dry feed
easier than I can throttle back
the flow of pompous rhetoric
that has ignited global animosity.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2025, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged firebreaks, photography, poetry, politics
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