Category Archives: Poems 2012

A deep blue you can see
ten-feet through
from high in the Sierras,

little towns trickling down
canyons, grassy ranches
slipping into the churn

of the Valley burning
outwards, bursts of yellow
equipment on freeways

singing with truckloads
on the Delta—four lane
busyness as usual.

Perhaps erosion only
slows amid the panic
of the guilty—as the

chubby turn hungry
when all the icing on
their birthday cake is gone.

It is the same
                    long line reaching into a cutbank carved by current
                    exposing rock tangled with roots that feed a tree,

                    as if feeling were a place or like a fire that keeps
                    a home warm—words cast to float upon the surface—

                    imitations of love and life tied meticulously to draw
                    the wild from the deep and dark corners of a river.

Our communion
                    with clouds that rest upon the mountain peaks.
                    Callous hands busy with routine free the mind to fly

                    on the wings of gliding hawks that know our habits,
                    hunt the periphery of our presence and follow upstream

                    with curiosity to read our purpose, know our work—
                    as we survey our moment through their eyes.

Midday August, we are disturbing
cows in brush shade rising from soft
hollows pawed in the live oak draws

to welcome brothers into their home
and leave the contemplation of life,
knocking in their bellies, behind

in the trees—to forget the inevitable
dreams of rain. Curious, they recognize
a new face, comfortably ignoring it

as we do one another visiting the familiar
over a quick count and a few flakes of hay.
Old men now looking over brittle ground

strewn with burnt, Blue Oak leaves and
early dark acorns, fractured yellow grasses
with each passing of hoof and wheel.

Good water here—this is his legacy,
his hold to the rock, his ready escape
from the urgencies of the valley

where cows come easily to greet us.
I need not see through his eyes beyond
this dry and brittle season, we feel it.

                                                    for Todd

Not much different than cows
who think they pick their way
grazing where they want, we

welcome the visiting gods
with wagon loads of plans
to improve our farm ground,

shopping centers in alfalfa fields,
foothill cities where only leftovers
trickle down. We surrender

to the hard and lean times,
let them have their way
like the natives before us.

The long-awaited General Plan Update 2:00 p.m. today,
Tulare County Board of Supervisors.

Groundswell

I keep all my shafts of light loosely wrapped
in tissue paper, dust motes swirling perpetually
in beams through cracked shingles on the shed

roof as we took turns urging invisible steeds
to new adventures, towards friends in town,
exchanging reins behind the empty tongue

of the manure spreader parked for decades,
just in case, beyond the barn and vineyard
canes waving at all time gone by before us.

Or through the stained glass high above
the carved oak pulpit in the adobe chapel
where I heard the call as a tiny particle

washed and floating in God’s eye, yet soon
forsaken once outside perfection. Or just before
she died, the pastel heavens streaking through

February clouds gathered before the dawn
upon the whole Kaweah watershed as folds
in her bedclothes—loosely wrapped and close

for times like this, saved to stave the hateful
rhetoric of prejudice and fears—as my ambiguous
solace from the obvious on election years.

Too often, I start with the conclusion
and walk backwards to make sure
I don’t lose sight of it, check

perspective with each sliding, baby step
to peer through holes in the rocks and trees
for dark movement, like cattle grazing

in the brush across the canyon. Sometimes
just parking, letting your horse stand as your
combined eyes and ears inhale the hillside

while the world’s clock ticks, skipping a few
beats to fall out of sync with the perfect
perjuries, can be enough in your quest.

But beware of slogans and sure sounds
that stir the blood without warning, bait
traps and ensure a life of hating enemies.

I might as well be naked, shoeless
in the brambles, useless as the clear
blue sky than to leave without a knife

folded in my pocket, its smooth bone
wearing new denim thin for decades
pressed against my left thigh, still

ready for work. So long ago, you
can’t remember your Christmas gift,
our any excuse to swap cutlery, a Case

Copperhead, four-inch lock-back blade
of surgical stainless steel that still glints
beneath my moustache, feeding hay—

old flatbed rocking on auto-pilot
across a blond oat flat, shiny black
heifers lined-out happy behind me.

Each time I reach to unfold it:
we are young men. Yet,
so much depends upon its edge.

                                                            for Gary

The heat on, set over 100 degrees,
cottontails lounge in the dust,
share shade with squirrels and quail

beneath the gooseneck. No talk
of politics, healthcare or guns, no
plan hatched to overthrow the sun.

Woodpeckers wait in line to cling
to leaky faucets, sip a drop at a time.
Roadrunners multiply before our eyes.

Almost every morning, we bump-up against
the old days over cigarettes and coffee cups
to bore the be-Jesus out of whichever young buck
happens to politely listen to yesteryear. All the men
and horses with big hearts tough to get along with,
that walked this ground when it was hard, harder than
Billy Hell without a 4WD and RTV. We start our days
amazed how far we’ve come to this perspective,
surviving floods and drought and them with
bigger calves, better corrals and goosenecks.

How envious they must be, looking down in disbelief
—quick pause to nod ‘tween ridge and dawn—
we go on and on, and tell a couple twice before
we remember what triggered the tale: something
out there come alive in our collective mind
before we join them. When I was seven,
you were my first cowboy hero at sixteen,
and now we laugh at the last-half century
without regret, without one ounce of lament,
glad to have a job to do and tickled with life.

                                                                        for Clarence