Category Archives: Poems 2012

Waist-deep in blond
and empty-headed wild oats,
black cows shine,

fat calves buck and run
like young fullbacks
against the grain

off the mountain
in a dusty cloud
to the corrals

to be weaned
and shipped—prices:
blue sky high.

In 1978, my father
sold his cows, claiming
that a man gets a year

like this only once
in a lifetime—
and he’d had two.

Old men talking:
cigarettes and coffee
well before day breaks
over the Western Divide
to blind us all, before
that flaming fireball
spills off the mountains.

No one wants to hear
about those old days
in the saddle when time
was cheap—plodding
with us like a shadow,
working for a dime raise
like it was worth a dollar.

All the bundled string
and brown paper saved
in drawers for another
wrapping, tomato seeds
drying on newsprint—
everyday was routine
with few accolades.

We take license
as survivors now
driving stakes in the ground:
like crank to cell phones
when there were no secrets
on a party line: we listened
for two longs and a short.

Laughable,
what we valued then
and now, how the wind
has changed direction—
how our future spins
just out of reach
and we still chase it.

The early light of summer, the
soothing coo of mourning doves
before day breaks over the Divide

with fireballs of flame cascading
down ridges to blind us all—that
long moment before the body stirs

outside, distant ravens squawking,
up early to survey its flesh, last night’s
leftovers on the road. Even longing

complaints of calves having spent
their first night without mothers
fade on a cool, down-canyon draft,

a quiet stillness but for the doves’
gentle awakening. Time to take
inventory—plan for another day.

Working together again, we had many
unfinished conversations, while pulling
our philosophical wagon in different directions—

like old times, but reveling in the space
we shared before us. How many years
have I kept the door closed, resenting

responsibility, all the loose ends left
for flexibility, all the sagging fences
and old equipment moaning for attention

and repairs? Each time I’d wake
to the dog’s bark, to the big boar coon
in the fruit trees, I’d jump back in,

run to catch up and join him fishing
up river, sneaking low like a soldier
behind hairy cedar trees, behind rocks

to cast to the next pool of rainbow trout
before their stampede to the churning
foam—last night, I slept like a baby.

Avoid the rockpiles, rotten logs and tall grass
where springs seep small drinks of water—
keep your eyes peeled where little people

wait their turns and congregate to serve
their hungers. Like the rooted Live Oak,
leaving is not an option, I have no desire

to see the world, to brave the claustrophobe,
squeeze up the chute to fly off to any better
business or pleasure than what surrounds me:

all the heavy heads of first-calf heifers,
dark eyes questioning. Among such trust,
our small following knows where we live.

Perhaps it was the war after all, or
all its protests—a lasting glimmer
of the moon traveling through pine

trees before sleep, and when I awoke,
clarifying details within my darkness:
that first rattlesnake coiled upon the flat,

water-worn boulder of speckled granite,
upright tail a blur I could not hear
for the roar of the Tule River—she

grabbed my tiny hand. Fear or despair,
I believe in the gods around me: delight
in the flycatchers riding the backs of hawks

to erase the ugly cat we tortured as boys—
always that shameful joy on the way
to manhood—real raw material for these

goddesses with better natures to improve,
touched and saved by their layered
melodies so: that I can no longer hear

the holy chorus of hate and prejudice,
cannot participate in that war dance, lend
one synapse to any cause organized by men.

I may cough with the dust of generations
inhaled to rattle in my lungs, lingering
with each breath—behind the herds of cattle

since the eighteen-fifties mixed and laid
to rest, becoming all the grass and browse
they could digest—or I may be this old dirt

now stirred within my flesh to become one
of Stafford’s precious clods compressed
with sweet memories well before my time

expires. Rain upon the dust, grass to flesh,
all the green springs blooming with calves—
cows and men—dust of dust alive again.

Most tracks fade beneath the little feet
of quail, or the pads of the wild, or last
night’s wind and we are gone, no longer
reading the latest news off the road alone.

Under thorny gooseberries overgrown,
a pestle rests in a granite grinding hole,
waiting for a sure hand and a woman’s
song to stir the rock back to life again.

The Coyote tree, two arms outstretched
at the top of the perfect grade the CCCs
carved with mules and a Fresno scraper,
dynamite, wheelbarrows and many picks

and shovels, has seen few humans since
the dam has held its beginning underwater—
the old Blue Oak has lost its bark with
no limbs left to hang a wild dog on.

A place to start before light,
before dark ridgelines open
like wildflowers in canyons—

each day an opportunity
to sing as we go out upon
the vast morning, greet

each moment’s details
as we move into a future
that we have helped shape.

The river’s mist, the churn and tumble
over boulders, where beneath its roar
and pines were trout for boys to catch.

I still get loud when we rub shoulders
on the phone, when I can’t see
your missing teeth. We dam rivers,

conserve irrigation water and believe
we can stop the floods and save
our sprawling delta cities with projects.

The water warms into a ditch, spreads
into furrows in fields to disappear
and feed ourselves at the same time—

we live between the snow and fruit
and pray for storms, for the pulse
and surge of plenty. We swim

within a system shaped like a tree—
in the deep narrows of its trunk
or on the fringes of its creeks.