Category Archives: Poems 2011

The branding pictures show gray
on most of my face, translucent quill
of Great White Egret stabbed

into the band of a worn black hat
among the young men – boys really,
full of it – all that tension stretched

like calves between horses and saddle
horns, turned loose to find its way.
Mostly, I forget – wing feather streaming

jauntily – an oxymoron on creaking knees
overlooked as another evolving casualty.
Like your bouquet of turkey feathers

we collected, scattered in the grass,
reunited in a living room vase after
a frantic death, each new feather

becomes a sign of surviving friction
in my mind – a prolonged life worn
with respect and envy for flight.

How he had hoped his words might
turn a smile, eyes cast down to rise
and meet somewhere beyond

with something new to share. But
she hid her face behind her hand
instead – as he stared off, pursing

lips into a silent whistle, picturing
it all again, replaying and weighing
each enunciation, wondering why

space between their horses grew.
Portraits, not wide-looped long-shots,
but up-close expression zoomed

across the pen through loose reins, tight
ropes and smoke to the peripheral asides –
faces to later read between the lines.

February 6, 2011

                                                                                                To-night, dear,
                                Let’s forget all that, that and the war,
                                And enisle ourselves a little beyond time,
                                You with this Irish whiskey, I with red wine.
                                                                – Robinson Jeffers, (“For Una”)

We talk cattle, calves turned cows by years
gone quickly now. Native girls and daughters
bred to handsome men who got around,

got by on grass – boring the dogs and cats
to sleep at our feet, come the gloaming.
First-calf heifers graze closer – black babies

butt heads, buck and run into the open pen –
to eavesdrop upon our mantra amid a chorus
of tree frogs, near and far, layers of jubilant

croaking unfolding beyond our ears. We
recognize the red cow’s call to her blind calf
who’s wandered off in circles after grass –

a distant, impatient blast he answers and turns
towards, walking straight across the pasture
into black milk. Out on the road, neighbors

coming home, old folks poking looks
at wood ducks in the creek as the planet
quakes with the day’s more pressing matters.

How many times have I listened to the rain, each blessing
fresher than the last refrain, each drop upon this thirsty dirt
absorbed – or with the thunderous clap of torrents wild at once,

reclaim this earth? There is no Sabbath here beneath the sun,
nor moon disguised amid the clouds aglow unless the storms
that claim this arid space above alluvium and silt have kept

our rivers rising over banks. O’ Raven’s Cry, Kaweah – Tule,
Kern and the Holy Kings that once fed an inland lake for ships
steamed-up from the San Joaquin, now find no pool to float

an autumn leaf – not since the floods be dammed to save us all
for air conditioned shelters built upon this fertile earth exchanged
for family farms to repay both domestic and the foreign banks.

An Eden turned, this San Joaquin – like the Tigris and Euphrates
flow tied tightly to a fate we know, yet we still pray for growth
as if the quince juice never dripped from Eve or Adam’s lips.

To the gentle sound of showers before another storm, I write
as if each drop, a harbinger of hope, enough to change the course
of retreating rivers long-controlled by those who also govern us.

I’ve been sitting on this one for awhile with the understanding that we really can’t go back, that the San Joaquin Valley will continue to evolve towards more urbanization, that the utilization of water will also move away from agriculture – that nothing stays the same.

I write to you hoping that I may lift
my weight upon the wings of words –
find an updraft, ride another aspect

arising from this righteous earth,
its rocks and rills, its well-worn dirt
beyond these walls we’ve built

to keep us safe and separate from
its wild designs – real art at work.
My selfish exercise, thinking

it might dispel despair for us both
to ride upon a buzz of words and
pulsing sounds to find ourselves

among the hawks, for an instant –
forgetting fear or finding new
looking through another set of eyes.

With wood, the artist within
created hollow log-ends
from fragrant cedar fascia,

an extra to match office to house –
O’ how the black night sings
at the corners in a storm, now

her voice reverberates, rising
on the wind, as I write, passing
from passion to wilder extremes.

The timbers ache and crack
as she screams like a lioness
pleading with her world within

earshot – to give her space and
a prince to quench her thirst – all
upon a carpenter’s afterthought.

                                    – for Tod Johnson

Fog upon the creek, a low cloud
clings to sycamores without leaves
beneath dark emerald hills at dawn.

Naked limbs emerge after a night’s
rain, then alternately withdraw as if
dancing with an undulating throng

secreted within a gray veil, a pantheistic
affair – a steamy, primeval revisiting
of First Light and the creation of things.

Strange new world and fresh beginning,
our pristine hope inhabited by others,
jubilant for an instant – but not quite like us

as the cloud moves upstream, leaving
their tangle frozen outside my mind –
as the creek mumbles me back to life.