The redbud's broad green leaves
float on long stems
from the stump I’ve left behind
half-dozen times instead
of digging it up
to chase insistent roots
with a shovel, unearthing
its bed of fat succulents
outside my window.
So determined,
it has even lifted a flower pot
to find the sunlight.
On light gusts it waves
in the corner of my eye
to interrupt my thoughts
as if a visitor arriving
with something important
to tell me.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2024, poetry
Tagged determination, persistence, photography, poetry, Redbud, roots
With so many holes in my memory
what remains seems like yesterday.
I jettisoned the shameful first,
then turned the irrational loose
to make room for the moment
before it slips away.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2024, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged Cord McKee, memory, moment, photography, poetry
It sounds like a drug
for the infirmed
or a dressing for horses’ hooves
or a government program
to keep poverty alive
and consuming—
it sounds soothing
to the summer-baked subconscious,
a galactic reprieve
before the leaves rain
in gusts
before the first storm
stirs weathered flesh.
Autumnal Equinox
just rolls off the tongue.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2024, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged autumnal equinox, photography, poetry
September 16, 2024 – #8043 Rocky – Chuck Fry Photo
September 17, 2024 – #8088 – Paregien – JCD Photo
for Age & Source Verification
A little more anticipation, it seems, as we’re calving 2 weeks later hoping to take advantage of cooler weather.
Dilated and making bag,
first-calf heifers choose to graze,
closer to our familiar voices
over morning coffee. Perhaps security,
or our loving pride they feel
long distance as we imagine
a pasture full of calves clinging
to a mother’s shadow, the buck and run
as they get older like the thirty years
before them. We begin another season
of grass with rain, with feeding hay
ready to face the future with them.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2024, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged Calves, Calving, family, first-calf heifers, photography, poetry
Wilma submitted poems to Dry Crik Review on her typical scraps of paper most of which I published. One, however, I did not publish because I could not decipher one word in the poem from her handwriting. I scanned it to Betty Blanks, who has recently authored a book “Pick Up Your Pen And Write: The Life of Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel” http://wilmaelizabethmcdaniel.com, to help me out. The word was ‘ping’. Til now, this amusing poem has never seen the light of day.
FAKE FORTY-NINER
We knew Ardell
had been acting crazy
for weeks
he grew a beard
stalked around
muttering to himself
I gotta go now
to Jackass Hill
to Poker Flat
and Angels Camp
I gotta pan some gold
race me some frogs
kiss me some CanCan girls
I really gotta go
He drove away in his Pinto
with the ping
towards the motherlode
on Golden Chain Highway 49
We didn’t hear from him
until his bonanza petered out
he phoned collect
the Pinto gave up in Jamestown
December 22, 1918 – April 13, 2007
I had the pleasure of reading some of Wilma’s poetry at the Tulare Historical Museum last night. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/wilma-elizabeth-mcdaniel
One poem I read:
REMEMBERING FARM WOMEN
As a child
I watched them
and I remember
a woman’s defense
was anything in reach
Her weapons were few
and always begrudged
Why did men imagine
they deserved the velvet touch
the nightingale’s voice
from a woman who plowed
when planting got behind
and prayed for rainwater
to wash her hair
Why did rough farmers
dream of girls
from the Ziegfeld Follies
when wives were vomiting
with another pregnancy
WordPress keeps trying to expand and improve their blogging template. I think I’ve got it figured out now, but not after sending half-dozen email copies to followers that was not in the form I intended.
John
After a brutal summer, we are enjoying a major change in temperature: a high of 87 yesterday and 55 this morning as storms hit the northwest and Canada.
As I’ve posted before, my father’s model for predicting the weather was based on a 30-day cycle beginning with noticeable changes in the month of August. If these changes were confirmed in September, he would count on rain on those days in October and/or November. My brother and I still rely to some degree on his model, but with the volatility of the weather in recent years, it’s anyone’s guess.
We’ve begun feeding as we wait for our first calves to arrive. We’ve moved our calving date back two weeks, from the first to the fifteenth, in response to the trend of high temperatures in early September. Not only is the heat hard on calving cows, but often there’s always a couple of first-calf heifers that leave their newborns in a hundred degree sun.
September also brings the catalogs for bull sales in California that offer a wide array of Genomic Enhanced Expected Progeny Data as well as links to videos of the bulls. I still rely on my eye, but it’s a far cry from the old days when I was starting out.
As the days get shorter, we still expect the temperatures to return to the century mark, but for the moment it’s delightful.
drycrikjournal 